"When I first appeared, after I did this EP in 1982 with Robert Wyatt [Summer Into Winter], I got a feature in the Melody Maker. The headline was something-or-other "in a blue afternoon". I was likened to him, but had never heard him – I was just a teenager when I made it, after all – and it took my years to find the actual album. It took years to find anything back then. Also, it'd been out of print for years, but eventually I found it, and still love it. 

It's only been since I've got older that I've thought about the roots of that culture, about these men like Fred Neil, Tim Hardin and Tim Buckley who grew up in that New York 1960s culture clash between jazz, folk and the blues, playing supperclubs, smoking weed. This is the first album Buckley produced himself, and it sounds like it. It's got the sense of someone reaching for something beyond his capabilities at that point. It doesn't always work, it's not always perfect, but it's all about human ambition, in its feel and it execution. I love that. All the best albums have that.
"

"I'd never heard of Connie Converse before I saw Anna & Elizabeth – this amazing American duo – singing one of her songs, Father Neptune. I'm always drawn to sea shanties, but I remember thinking, wow, where does this come from? Her songs felt very different to me, but also familiar – I like to think it's me. ‘One By One' is about a woman walking in the dark, and it's heartbreaking, but so beautiful. ‘Trouble Man In The Sky' is about her falling in love with Orion, and it all going wrong. Even in her humorous and philosophical moments there's an underlying sadness, which for a folk singer is very attractive [laughs]. And then she left home one day, left her family a letter, saying, I'm going, just let me be. So ambiguous. Then she wasn't heard of again. But even before that, he's a fascinating songwriter. Her songs reminded me of Molly Drake's. They're so unusual, but so human. And I'm not a songwriter, I'm a singer, so I'm always about finding songs to sing. Ones full of intelligence, humour and melancholy that feel a bit apart, they always speak to me.
"