"This album is a big one for me. My friend Michael Diamond from the Beastie Boys introduced me to it. He visited me in Portland and I took him to this record store that was $1 per record and it was just bins and bins of records. He said, ""Oh my god, you should totally get this, it's a great record"", so I got it. In it, Isaac Hayes is leading an orchestra and he's also at the piano and he's talking in between songs telling funny stories. So it's almost a cabaret performance. I didn't know what that was when I got the record. Well, I kind of did, as my uncle was a drag queen. But it was the fact that he would tell stories that would lead into a song. I had done that in Bikini Kill but people were just like, ""Shut up and just sing your song!"" and I was like, ""No! What if I specifically made it a part of the show and had things I was going to talk about?"" His stories would turn from tragic to funny. It really validated what I was doing but he was doing it better. I thought, instead of trying not to do it so I don't get shit I should just do it better. Keep doing it and doing it even better and make it more part of the show instead of less. The other huge thing was, ""Why don't I get to work with an orchestra? Why don't I get to work with really talented people and be like, 'No, let's change it to the key of B' like, 'This key would be better for my voice' and have people who really know what they're doing?"" I'm in that band now – not an orchestra, but I'm working with musicians where I'm like, ""Hey, can we do this song for my sweet spot vocally?"" I'm not the leader in the way that Isaac Hayes was on that album. That record really made me question why I didn't think of myself as someone able to work with people who can talk about things being sharp or flat."

"Nebraska is different from all the other Bruce Springsteen albums because it's not very bombastic! It's just acoustic guitar on a four-track machine. It's got to be the most lo-fi record you could get from Bruce Springsteen. I believe that's because he made demos for the E Street Band, and just didn't like how they sounded when they were played with the band. His producers, and I think one of his bandmates said to him, "The demos sound better". When I first heard it, I think that I only knew Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie in terms of that type of sound - someone working with a harmonica and an acoustic guitar. He's writing about the working classes of America, or people who are failing in their lives or trying to make it but failing. It's darker than other records too though. I think he's taking inspiration from stories he's read in the newspaper about criminals who are serving life sentences or those who are going to the electric chair. At the same time, it's about families, brothers and someone's father who is no long alive. It's got a lot of humanity in it as a record, with this resonating and wonderful sound - daunting vocals and very haunting harmonica parts. There are also loads of reverbs and a glockenspiel is on there too. It's a murky-sounding record at first, but the more you listen to it, you find all of these other details. I was at school when I first heard it. I couldn't think of an obvious way that Bruce has influenced me, until I wrote a song called 'Elvis Has Left The Building' which is on my new album. I just thought that the kind of song it was, and the mood, reminded me of 'Streets Of Philadelphia' or 'Nebraska' - not in an obvious way, and I didn't think of him in order to write it, but it reminded me of that in an odd way."