"I guess I’ll have to start with Songs from the Second Floor, which is a film by Roy Andersson, who is a brilliant Swedish filmmaker who basically… He made a feature in the ’70s called A Swedish Love Story that is a really wonderful, strange, funny, acerbic commentary on Sweden that became this huge hit. I think it was the biggest hit ever in Sweden. And then he delved into making commercials for a long time, and he developed this new style over the course of something like 300, 400, 500 commercials. Then, in the early 2000s, he came out with this film that took him several years to make called Songs from the Second Floor, which is like a parody of obsessive perfectionism. He’s very similar Jacques Tati in that he works primarily with stationary wide shots, and he’s always building sets. All of the sets in his films are built from scratch, and the reason his films take so long to make is because each each vignette is one shot, and the set for that shot tends to take a month to build. There’s just like these gorgeous paintings, and there’s this really singular, dark, dry, sad wit driving everything he does. Since Songs from the Second Floor he’s come out with two other films that play like spiritual sequels, You the Living and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, which I think you can see on Netflix. But Songs from the Second Floor remains the most perfect of the films, in my opinion."

"Phil Lynott. Genius. And a bass player as well. Have you noticed that most of the music normally comes from guitarists? But he was the driving force in this band. He was a skinny black guy, who was writing great songs and dealing with the consequences of racism in the UK at that time. He was always the main attraction to me. A real rock star and you'd feel that whenever he walked into a room. You can instantly recognise Phil's voice, and he had a really cool way of creating melody on songs like 'Jailbreak'. This album is distinctly Irish, and I'm not sure why I think that to be honest but it definitely makes it special. At the time they were about as unique as they could be. And it was quite successful in the charts, which, along with seeing bands like them on Top Of The Pops, was another important factor. After Phil died and Thin Lizzy came back a few years ago we took them out on tour but that's partly because the songs have held together so well even to this day. It was a real joy to do that and to be able to hear those songs played every night, and played so well. And to be honest I think that's enough, because the songs are really what matter. They're still playing together, but I think they're called Black Star Riders now. The last record was very good, but nothing compared to this."

"I first heard this on the radio in the car about six months ago. Rarely will anything break my concentration when I’m driving but occasionally I’ll hear something and think ‘Wow, that’s got something’ and make a note of it to listen to later and this sir Was track sounded great. The Lemon Twigs’ record did that, when I heard some of those tracks I really liked the attitude, they’re very stylistic and retro to a degree, but the attitude was real enough to not make it all about the style. “So when I heard ‘In The Midst’ I really liked the beat. When I listen to something I think the sound hits me first and I’ll get into the track later on, where I’ll get into the lyrics and the more I hear it I’ll know the workings of the track, but with that first instinctive listen, I normally hear a bassline or the beat. “There’s a song on World’s Strongest Man called ‘The Oaks’ - I call it ‘The Billie Jean Beat’, it’s a running ‘Billie Jean’ beat with a loop over it - and ‘In The Midst’ has got this Al Green beat to it with these reverbed vocals that are almost like The Flamingos and The Shangri-Las. I listened to more of the sir Was record and it’s quite a weird record actually, there’s some great moments and then there’s some stuff I’m not so into, but I definitely like the attitude and the sound on this track. Sonically ‘In The Midst’ is up my street, it’s really cool."