"Hearing this Leonard Cohen stuff, after listening to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers it was like ‘this sounds like bullshit!’, I didn’t understand the layers of intellect that had gone into making that record, and the large element of humour. My dad is into Leonard Cohen, I remember hearing the older stuff, then my sister was getting into it because she was becoming very literary. I was basically absorbing Leonard Cohen but I wasn’t crazy about it. I remember hearing ‘The Story Of Isaac’ as a child and thinking ‘god, this is fully intense, it’s so bare’. I remember hearing I’m Your Man it and at first finding it a really odd, unenjoyable experience, but now I realise that it’s a very curious idea, this industrial Leonard Cohen record, it’s really cool! ‘First We Take Manhattan’, imagine being a musician and being able to put a song like that out."

"This would be from when I did 'Sisters Of Mercy' for the film Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man. I was so happy to be given that song. I love Leonard Cohen; I've always loved him, grew up around that music. He is the most extraordinary lyricist, but he, as well, creates such a mood with his music. It's like nothing else. He belongs in my life as a writer and as a singer. I suppose this record, again, it's actually quite similar to Joni Mitchell; not brilliantly imaginative on my part to begin with, but just every single song is a classic. I've read bits and pieces of his poetry and he's an extraordinary poet. It's poignant, and there's humour, coupled with the pathos. He's a poet, he's an extraordinary writer and singer and beautiful man, and, what can I say? Is that enough?"

"The Future came out at around the same moment I discovered Maria Callas, and I got into it somewhat, but it was really Martha who was affected most by that record when it was released, along with a few of my friends. I could see it having its effect on the world around me. But I didn't really understand it for a long time, and then years later when we did the Leonard Cohen tribute shows in Australia, which were filmed for the I'm Your Man film, I really started looking at his material, and I realised that record was so seminal in his career. It was really when he became Leonard Cohen, in a lot of ways, in terms of how he ended up. I can pinpoint that transition as a useful guide in terms of my own career, where you hit a certain age and you have to kind of reinvent yourself – not totally, but you have to settle into a theme, and Leonard really did that with The Future so successfully. I think there's other albums that do that: Paul Simon with Graceland, Neil Young with Harvest Moon, so that's what I admire the most about that record."

"It’s ‘The White Hotel’ by DM Thomas because I’ve only read to about page forty-seven. I couldn’t get past the poem section, which is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read. As one solid book of poetry and evocative writing, it’s the best. I thought I was in that poem; kind of similar to the way Leonard Cohen makes me feel like I’m in his songs. I’ve recommended it to anyone who I thought could read."

"I could’ve chosen any [Robert] Altman film from that golden period. M*A*S*H was just mindblowingly exciting as… I think I was a drama student, probably, at the time, so all those Altman films that came: Nashville, McCabe and Mrs Miller, California Split. I just loved his work, so McCabe and Mrs Miller — that whole world he created I just thought was magnificent, and the Leonard Cohen music and the beauty of the winter up in Alaska or wherever it was. It was great."

"Time gets flattened out, because now we’re into the digital age. Usually, I’m quite a retro person, but my manager was one of the first people to buy an iPod, so I got one. But then I thought, When am I ever going to use that? It took me ages to take it out of the box—maybe four or five years—and then I just couldn’t see the point of carrying it around. The first song that I ever downloaded was Leonard Cohen’s “Death of a Ladies’ Man.” Leonard Cohen and Scott Walker are the two real touchstones in terms of people I’ve listened to consistently throughout my whole life. If you listen to that first Pulp record, it is just a direct rip off of his first album—though I’m not saying it was as good as that. I was very lucky to [meet Cohen] when his album Old Ideas came out. I hosted the playback of that in London, and then I interviewed him about it. I was nervous about doing that, but I’m really glad that I did. I didn’t get to know him so much, but at least I got to meet him, and I was able to tell him how much his work had meant to me."

"This might not be an album that people celebrate, but to me, the combination of Phil Spector and Leonard Cohen worked really well. His lyrics are so deeply poetic that you sometimes don’t know what he’s talking about, but it doesn’t matter because they’re beautiful. “It’s a very humanistic record. The stories are very eloquent and touching, and the melodies are very rich. I love the fact that all the songs are unbelievably slow, too. It’s an unusual-sounding record. His voice has changed a lot over the years, but on this record he’s really trying to sing. It sounds like he’s straining, but that’s OK because it sort of adds to the drama."

"Leonard Cohen’s records were very well produced and orchestrated; this one is produced by Bob Johnston the same guy that worked with Dylan. I really just love the title of the record because it’s Songs of Love And Hate and that puts it all into perspective and kind of defines Leonard in a way, that the music is about emotion . ‘Avalanches’ is such an amazing song. I always loved that song, but I kind of came back to it after I heard Nick Cave’s version of it, because Cave’s version is so intense and brings out all the intensity of Leonard’s version. Leonard’s version is much more understated but once you hear Nick’s, Leonard’s is equally intense without having the electric guitars and the drums and all that. Cohen’s another person I just constantly go back to for inspiration, especially these days as I’m writing more songs on my own and playing more acoustic guitar and getting deeper and deeper into the acoustic guitar. A lot of the Leonard songs are done not just on an acoustic guitar but a nylon string acoustic guitar – a real folk guitar. I just love his atmosphere. Songs of Love And Hate is full of interesting songs that cover a whole range of emotions that folkies were supposed to cover but the idea of covering songs of hate: love and hate are two sides of the very same coin. It’s hard to break his songs down because they’re so enigmatic. That’s the Cohen album I chose this week, but next week it will be a different one."

"May he rest in peace, the lovely little angel. I love this song. Musically we only heard Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Enya when I was a child, there was nothing else as we didn’t have a radio. I love Enya as well, especially the way she just stays the same and doesn’t change her sound. She knows what she’s here to do and she does it. ""This was one of the songs that I really loved when I was unable to understand what he was saying, because I didn’t know English then, or at least I didn’t know these lyrics yet, because they were so complicated. I ended up learning my English mainly from online gaming or computer games like World Of Warcraft. “’Suzanne’ is my childhood, safety, my mother, discovering music and English and falling in love with a song again and again the more that I grow. It’s like a forever growing song, because it grows with you while you grow.”"

"I had to chop out Songs Of Love & Hate by Leonard Cohen, but I've got a later man-and-acoustic-guitar record that I think I like a little more. What I've got in now is October Language by Belong. The first Belong album is just synthesised guitar noise but incredibly serene and beautiful. It's a pretty unique record. The only record that I could compare it to through personal experience is Endless Summer by Fennesz, the so-distorted-that-it-starts-to-confuse-you guitar noise. It's just a wonderful record. It's a great record to listen to while travelling. I think that's the best circumstance to listen to music in. Where did I discover it? Probably record shopping. I'm really good friends with the guys who work in Monorail, and they have quite a good gist of what music I like, so there's a good chance I went in and they threw it at me and said 'this has got you written all over it'."