"I recently realised that I was leaving the Thompson Twins out of my list of influences because I subconsciously felt they were embarrassing. But I listened to a lot of Thompson Twins. Into the Gap was my favourite when I was 12 or 13. When I go back and revisit those records, some of it sounds a little dated, but actually they hold up really well. I feel like the songwriting of the Thompson Twins is one of the overlooked treasures of the 80s. It's really, really good. There are songs that tend towards the cheesy side, like 'Doctor Doctor', but if you listen to the deep songs on those records, the songwriting is fantastic. The lyrics are really, really good. That's what was on repeat when I was just starting to write songs. The ages 12 through 17 were when I felt I was completely defined by music, completely engulfed by it. You rarely saw me without a set of headphones on because I was trying to block out the rest of the world. Which is funny now – the only time nowadays I put a set of headphones on is to listen to mixes. I don't ever, ever wear an iPod. I barely even listen to music, which is no joke. But back then I was soaking up music like a sponge."

"You can hear it's making, in the same way you can hear Joni in her lonely love cabin. Just the idea of the moon cast out on the water. That paints a picture. I can hear excitement and new love all over that Melody's Echo Chamber record. When my last relationship ended a few years ago now, I pissed off to New York for a bit, just to sort of gather my thoughts, and I would take to sitting in a cafe with my headphones on, listening to a piece of music and I had put together words to it in a book. And I remember being quite pleased with something I had just written, taking my headphones off, and that music, Melody's Echo Chamber, was playing on the sound system in the cafe. I listened to it, spellbound, you could just feel the excitement in it. I was listening to that, and I just looked away, who is this? And I shut my book and felt like giving up music. It was just so fucking good. And actually at the end of a tune, you hear them all whooping in the studio. It's like when you hear the Kinks whooping during 'Victoria' – when you're hitting a certain level of energy, bang on the nose, you're allowed to record yourself whooping at your own efforts I think."

"Before I dropped out to start the Pixies, I was in university in Massachusetts. [Future Pixies guitarist] Joey Santiago and I rented a house in the second year. I took the dark windowless room because it had a stereo and I would just sit in the dark and listen to Iggy Pop and XTC records for hours and hours. The one I listened to the most, though, was This Year's Model. They had it on cassette tape at the music library in college, which I remember had these horrible hard plastic headphones, like something you might find in the Soviet Union in 1959. Instead of studying I'd go in there and listen to Elvis Costello over and over until my ears hurt and my head couldn't take it anymore."