"Jeff Buckley’s vocal range is staggering. He’s basically a classical singer, he’s so technically gifted. When I was on tour as Cat’s Eyes a lot of the singers that sing with us are classical singers, and on tour this year we were discussing who you think has the best musicality – and Jeff Buckley was one of the people that we mentioned. I don’t know much about his life other than who his Dad was, but I think it’s actually really rare to hear a singer within guitar music that has such musicality. I don’t think it can be taught either, I think it’s just something he has innately. His tone is incredible on this, it’s unreal. This is something you can’t copy, it’s only something you can appreciate. As someone who learnt to sing really late in life, it’s interesting to me. I learnt from scratch, just from playing. At the beginning of The Horrors it was a lot more shouting, spontaneous and came out of nowhere, just raw expression. I feel like none of us really knew what we were doing. In a way I think just reacting instinctively is the best way to get into things that you love, but I learnt a lot from Rachel (Zeffira) of Cat’s Eyes. She was an opera singer originally, before we met. Singing with her I was able to access my own musicality, which is a hard thing to do. What’s really great about this song is that Jeff Buckley chose to do it in the first place. If you listen to the whole of Grace, this song comes out of nowhere. The fact that he was brave enough to choose a classical piece and put it on his record, and for it to work as well – the bravery of it is inspiring. There’s a vulnerability to this song that you don’t hear in a lot of male singers. It’s easy for someone in the charts like Sam Smith to portray ‘emotion’, but to me his voice transmits no emotion because I feel like its trained emotion. They’re worlds apart. Maybe it’s too easy to target these artists because their songs are made for a purpose, but ‘Corpus Christi Carol’, and Jeff Buckley’s voice in general, has a vulnerability to it that first of all, male singers are afraid to show, and second of all, they wouldn’t be able to do it because they don’t have the soul or technique – and it’s not something male singers aspire to either. I have no idea when I first heard this song. A lot of people at school liked Jeff Buckley but this song was kind of tucked away in the record. It took me a while to find the song and hear it, but I heard it on its own one night and hearing it like that I could really appreciate how totally unique it is"

"Diamond Dogs was another one from my Dad’s record collection. That record and Ziggy Stardust had a huge impact on me, I liked the glam aspect and the production was so cool. I liked the cover of Diamond Dogs, with the half-dog, half-man and I listened to “Rebel Rebel” - which I loved - but then I got into ‘We Are the Dead’ and that was some next-level shit. That song showed me some of the theatrics and drama that you could do with music and how you could create such a mood. It’s not just about plugging in the guitar and singing a song, it’s also about the production work and choosing the right instrument for the purpose. “We Are the Dead” literally scared me to death as well, I’d put it on just to torture myself because it was so creepy. Diamond Dogs is such a theatrical record. It’s so diverse and dramatic. It changes throughout the record and every song sounds different - it’s like a storybook or something. It had a gatefold sleeve that the lyrics were printed out on and that was the kind of shit that I loved to look at and read while he sang. Bowie’s my hero and I’ve cited him in every interview I’ve ever done. I met him once when I was just starting out on Virgin Records. I was backstage with my manager and they arranged for this meeting, he came out and sat with me, we spoke about being on the same label and me having a record coming out. It was so cool, it was like meeting a president or something, he was still so otherworldly and unattainable. It was very brief, and it was very formal. I maybe could have met him in different circumstances at some point along the line, but I’m glad I didn’t. He remains this ever-changing mythical character. I love him."

"This was the basis for the baseline in Sleaford Mods, fucking great stuff. Stuff like 'The Lurch'. They did a cover of the Gun Club's 'Sex Beat', that's great. Most of Weatherall's work is bass heavy, it's solo stuff. Wrong Meeting, the album that came after this, that's bass-led. There's a rockabilly feel to it. But with From The Double Gone Chapel it's 80s synths, bass, car alarms. The inner sleeve, which is just a coffee stain and a packet of Marlboro Lights next to it, that really influenced me. Same with Mike Skinner's sleeve where he's just sat in his flat with a pint, it's just fucking brilliant. That's how it is, he's not pretending to be anything. Those things merge, all of it is a big melting pot. I think I've hit it good with the albums that I have chosen for you as far as my contribution to Sleaford Mods. I mean, Andrew, whatever he makes, I go with. Initially, when we started doing Wank, the album before Austerity Dogs, I would have said to Andrew that I want a big heavy bass and I want a dusty Wu Tang thing. He took that on board and made it his own, then he would bring these slices of music to me and I thought the sound wasn't something I'd really go for, but it was quite good. I don't tell him anything any more, he just gets on with it. This the band I've been trying so hard to get into. I think we've been very lucky, regardless of the hard work and the shit me and Andrew went through, it was luck as well. I feel quite grateful that it happened to us."