"Sirk’s assembled team of actors and craftspeople has never been better! Frank Skinner’s underrated score really carries this hurtling narrative from its first insane notes, dialing up the Euripidean melodramatics to levels worthy of the luridly saturated Technicolors lensed by Russell Metty. Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Lauren Bacall (of that certain age long before any other Sirk heroine), and the impossible-to-carbon-date Dorothy Malone, in a helmet of dead hair, whirl around each other like a mobile in a gale, all the while perfectly delivering dialogue as confected as Alexander Golitzen’s decors. Hard to believe Rock’s muse, Ross Hunter, didn’t produce this one!"

"Kurt Cobain talked about punk a lot even though everyone spoke about Nirvana being a grunge band, which I found quite confusing at the time. So I asked a friend of mine’s uncle about what punk was and I went out and got the first Clash record and the Sex Pistols. I was kind of into that, and then the '90s American skate punk thing arrived in my life. It’s a complex record, but it’s a really fun, poppy record at the same time Green Day and The Offspring were the gateway bands and I got heavily into NOFX, Pennywise and all that stuff, but the record that really sticks with me is Everything Sucks. It’s fast, it’s hard, it’s heavy but it’s also melodic as well. It’s a complex record, but it’s a really fun, poppy record at the same time. I listened to it yesterday. It’s a masterpiece of punk rock. It was my gateway into underground punk rock"

"I'd loved the previous albums but then Attack & Release came out and they'd worked with Danger Mouse, who is one of my favourite producers and was doing great stuff around then with Gorillaz and Martina Topley-Bird, and he'd done The Grey Album thing too, and I think Gnarls Barkley came just after this. Quite an unusual choice of producer for them, because they'd been doing quite hard stuff before that. Not rock rock, but y'know. It was just an amazing blend. Danger Mouse has got a real swing to the stuff he does, and he'd put a surrounding swing to it, combining two quite raw musicians - and an amazing vocalist - and it's just this incredible album. I've seen them a couple of times - and I think I built my expectation of them up too much - I mean, they were amazing, but I think I was expecting it to be the pinnacle of all gigs."

"This is Bruce’s first album and probably one of his best. There’s a richness and naïvety on this record that ends up in these lyrical paintings that speak something dear to my heart. It’s about my home, and it’s in a language I understand. I always felt like this was “our” record. The people like “us” who were outcasts growing up. It’s one part Dylan, one part Van Morrison, and then there’s this Marlon Brando part that encapsulates the beautiful losers. There aren’t any winners on this record, only people in “Lost in the Flood.” Even the brighter moments have a sadness to them. “Does this Bus Stop at 82nd Street?” says it well: “Drink this and you’ll grow wings on your feet.” Since reality is so hard, at some point the fantasy takes over. Fantasy, and die hard belief in a different life just over the horizon. It’s that fantasy of rock and roll that some people are too affected to believe in anymore. But this record helps me keep the faith in the childlike wonder of music, and rock and roll in particular. This was my rulebook starting out writing songs. It still is. For the lost, for the lovers, for the crazies, and everyone in between—""For You."" It was like he was saying to me and everyone I knew who lost but believed in spite of those losses, you could still win. “I came for you.”"

"This would be the opposite to a lot of the records we've been talking about - it's complicated, there's a lot of instrumentation going on. That's one of the things I really like about Tortoise, they can play all that stuff live and pull it off. I think they have nine members sometimes, maybe even more, but it's one of those records where it's a really cool electronic record but it's actually really organic because these guys are really playing. Those two things are so different and so hard to blend well, I've tried it myself and failed often, it's hard to do. The musicianship needs to be there, and the programming needs to be right - I may be wrong but I think a lot of those type of songs are created electronically and then people try to interpret them, but with Tortoise I don't know how it starts - do they start organically and then interpret them electronically? Especially with Standards, it's a perfect blend of the two. I definitely feel an affinity with post rock groups like Tortoise, maybe people like Shellac as well."