"I was just thinking last night, after I’d already sent you the list of songs, “Why didn’t I put that Lux Prima record in there?” It’s my favourite of the year so far. The first time I heard this song it knocked the wind out of me. Where did that melody come from? I’d never heard it, and yet it felt like it had existed for all eternity. By the time the track's over, it's already ingrained in you. Something else I love about this album is that it starts with a couple of songs that have you thinking that you know where the record’s going, and then it takes this hard right turn. I love that! Why don’t bands do that more often? You think of Ziggy Stardust as being this big rock record, but you forget that all of the big rock songs are saved for the back half. Side one is all soul and pop. I like that kind of sequencing, where the band is being deliberate, where they know they’re handling a piece of art. I think, with us having just put together Everything Hits at Once, I relate to that more than ever - that sense of wanting the album to gradually take the listener somewhere."

"This record was so, so important to me. My friend went to see Slipknot play an instore show at a Virgin Megastore and he came back with this tape with The Workhorse Movement on one side and Glassjaw on the other, essentially Roadrunner Records trying to pitch their next big acts. He gave me the tape saying 'This is fucking rubbish, you should just have it,' and I listened to Workhorse movement and thought it was the worst thing I'd ever heard. But then I listened to Glassjaw and it was so raw and pure, it had that same urgency that I thought Nirvana must have had in the day, no frills, no production to hide behind, it was stripped back so there was no cloak, just dagger. I listened to this album until my CD didn't work anymore. I loved the whole story behind Glassjaw too, how Ross Robinson went and saw them play 30 seconds of a song, told them to stop and then they had a fight with him. It's rock & roll perfection. At that stage I'd played in a couple of bands but I was just taking music in. You're open at that age to everything, and this just really poured in."

"Next one would be Contempt by Godard. The first time I ever saw it, on a VHS copy 25 years ago, I thought it was the worst movie I’d ever seen. Actually, every Godard film I’ve ever seen I’ve hated the first time. But it got re-released a number of years back and I was in New York and saw it at the Film Forum, and I felt like I was seeing Halley’s Comet, you know — I couldn’t believe how wrong I was; how much I’d despised this film the first time I saw it and how much my second viewing was completely the polar opposite reaction. I think the performances, from Bardot and Piccoli to Jack Palance, to, you know, Cotard’s photography and Delerue’s amazing repetitive score… to me it’s one of those Godard movies where it’s a perfect balance between heart and mind, you know? Oftentimes his films are extremely heavy, but this film was not only heavy — you could forever gaze into it on repeated viewings, as it appeals to your intelligence — but it also appealed to your soul. It was a huge, huge inspiration for Blue Valentine, especially the middle section of Contempt, where it feels like this 45-minute sequence where this couple is in their apartment."

"ARE YOU KIDDING?! Magical Cloudz?! Majical Cloudz is two guys from Montreal and this record is only two years old. I bought it on a whim because I was intrigued by the strange spelling and a friend had seen them live and said that it was one of the most startling experiences of his life. I didn't listen to it immediately, but a couple of days after New Year's, I was feeling crushed, it was raining, I had it on my headphones and there was something so private and discreet about it. It's all to do with the lyrics and the singer; the music is very understated, there's no real progression in the songs. Unobtrusive, discreet backdrops for what it might feel like stumbling across an AA meeting or a domestic argument or reading someone's diary. There's a confessional, disarming honesty about his lyrics, they're poetic - there's some imagery that adds to the strangeness in a way, but when I listen to it, I feel like I have a companion in my head, the same as when you fall in love with a book. Of all the records that have recently come out, it's the only one I feel like I'll be in love with for a long time, it's very special to me."

"""This one is like the mystery house on Escape to the Country, it’s a curveball. The point I wanted to make with ‘2-4-6-8 Motorway’ is that it’s not one of my favourite songs, the point is it’s always been there but I only really discovered it and fell in love with it in the last couple of weeks. That’s one of the most exciting and inspiring things about making music, discovering songs that have existed your whole life, even though you may have only been semi-aware of them. “I’ve always found it much easier to place my faith in songs that have existed my whole life than a new band or a new artist, you know what they are, you know they’re not going to let you down, they’re not going to do anything sexist or say anything racist or make a terrible second EP. “It’s also so exciting discovering things, I love all those reissue labels like Light in the Attic and finding these treasure troves of records and artists that have been there your whole life, like ‘How has this existed my entire time on earth and I’ve never stumbled upon it?’ ‘2-4-6-8 Motorway’ is a stone cold classic, it’s very British, it’s a big song."""

"I saw Ashes and Diamonds for the first time in 1961. And even back then, during that period when we expected to be astonished at the movies, when things were happening all over the world, it shocked me. It had to do with the look, both immediate and haunted, like a nightmare that won’t stop unfolding; the sense of maddening insanity and absurdity, the tragedy of political infighting on the brink of peace and coming of age during wartime; and the beauty of the lead actor, Zbigniew Cybulski. The film has the power of a hallucination: I can close my eyes and certain images will flash back to me with the force they had when I saw them for the first time over fifty years ago. I’ve crossed paths with Andrzej Wajda a few times over the years, and I’ve always been in awe of his energy and his unflinching vision. I saw him again a couple of years ago, a little frailer but still as burning with energy as he’d been back in the ’90s, and he was preparing to make another film, now just completed, about Lech Walesa (the final installment of the trilogy that began with Man of Marble and Man of Iron). He’s a model to all filmmakers."