"Bikini Kill was on tour and we went to this club in Brighton under the pier and the fucking coolest looking girls in the whole universe walked in. They were the band, and they just started singing and they were the Headcoatees. They were just the coolest thing and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. Then I got the record and really liked their version of the song 'When You Stop Loving Me' that's on that album. I always liked garage rock and I felt like they did it so well – it was the kind of music I could listen to all day and be happy. That record is more about personal stuff and I was getting really burnt out. I don't want to just listen to stuff that's about politics all the time. I want to have my guilty pleasures and I'm not feeling guilty about finding them pleasurable. They made me think I want my music to be enjoyable, not just hard all the time. I want there to be moments where it's like: "This is really fun." I always say Bratmobile was a better band than Bikini Kill, partially because I had that anger to propel me forward and also protect me, whereas they have this sort of, "Hey we're at this summer party and we don't care that you don't even know what a summer party is, fuck you." It was like they were having a summer party on stage and I'm invited. They would literally get up, just Molly [Neuman] and Allison [Wolfe] before Erin [Smith] joined the band, and just sing stuff like, "Girl germs, no return", like childhood rhymes. They're doing it in a room full of predominantly men who are, like, Melvins fans and I was just like, "Man, that takes fucking guts." I heard people in the audience say, "I want to do this and this to the singer, we should fucking murder them" and meanwhile I was having my life changed: "This is the most incredible thing I've ever seen." I use that in my performance partially based on them and I definitely saw their vulnerability as a strength instead of a weakness. I wanted to be able to flash between characters that were very traditionally female and have a macho persona as well, so I try to have both and not just be like the Henry Rollins of riot grrrl."

"Lisa Helps the Blind were Belle and Sebastian before they were Belle and Sebastian, a very early incarnation of the band when it was mainly the two Stuarts - Murdoch and David. I used to put on bands at this place in Glasgow called The 13th Note, there’d be a Tuesday night where anybody could play and then a Thursday night for groups who maybe were a little bit more together. “Stuart Murdoch came down a couple of times and he’d sometimes play at acoustic nights there too. I think I put on one show when they were still Lisa Helps the Blind. What I remember more than anything else was how quietly Stuart would sing, to the point that you could barely hear him over the general level of chatter in the room. I think he was very frustrated at the time, because it wasn’t in his nature to make a scene and force people to listen; he wanted them to pay attention because they appreciated the songs, you know? He was clearly a great melodic songwriter, but that track especially... “I’ve got that demo tape somewhere, in a box and it’s been there for the last two or three times I’ve moved house. I wish I could find the bloody thing because I love that version of the song. It’s quite different from the Belle and Sebastian recording that came out later, on the 3...6...9 Seconds of Light EP. I don’t want to diss that version, but the Lisa Helps the Blind one was slower and felt a little bit more lovingly crafted. I just thought, ‘Whoa, there’s something special going on here with this guy and his writing.’ “The lyrics weren’t like anything I’d heard before - the imagery he was using was both extremely profound and extremely non-rock and roll, this song from the perspective of a guy who’s going to church and fantasising about this rather plain-looking girl who is resenting being in church herself. I fell in love with the quirkiness and contrariness of it, but there was also a quiet self-assurance to it that I’ve admired about Stuart ever since. “I was in one of Belle and Sebastian’s early press photos too, they didn’t appear in them themselves in those early days. That was a very specific time in 1996, after Tigermilk and before If You’re Feeling Sinister. Stuart just stopped me on Byres Road one day, when I was out on my bike. I look so chuffed, because I loved that bike more than anything else in the world. I took a train out to Helensburgh and bought it from this guy who’d bought it new in 1948 and cycled to work on it every day of his life until he retired. It was this really heavy, beautiful old Raleigh. “I was away on tour one time and the landlady of my flat on Bank Street in Glasgow cleared out the garage and she chucked it out. It was so heart-breaking! Anyway, the photo is from a period when the band were being bashful but also playing games with the press at the same time, which was funny. Stuart was a great photographer, you’d always see him around town with his camera.”"