"Someone made me a mixtape once of a lot of amazing folk and soul and jazz, kind of legendary songs, quite rare, and it had a lot of Pentangle and Fairport Convention and it had 'Compared To What' on it. And I went seeking 'Compared To What' because I thought ""what is that song?"", and that's what inspired the song 'Central Reservation'. It's just an amazing record. Come the last six years, I was just like, ""you know what, the sound of the next record is this record"". One of the reasons is that I love the fact that the drums and bass are ever-present and yet, at the same time, they're almost not there. I can't explain it; it's like all of the elements of the record are perfectly heard but each sound has so much space around it. It's got the most extraordinary rhythm, emotion and beautiful songs. When I started speaking to Tucker Martine [Sugaring Season producer], who produced the album, I said ""okay, here's a blueprint for a sound I love and a record that I love"", and that was it. We weren't being analytical; it gave us a starting place, and from there it grew out. It's just filtered through in different ways."

"I was a dancer, and this movie inspired me to become a dancer, I think. I grew up watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films, and they really inspired me. I loved watching the big dance sequences in this film. Gene Kelly is phenomenal. I love that the film has fun looking into the transition from silence into sound in the movie world as well. It was a big challenge for a lot of actors to go from one to the other, and I think they have a really hilarious look at that transition. But also I think it’s these big dance numbers and big choreographed pieces with a hundred dancers on top of their game. You just wouldn’t see that anymore. You wouldn’t see sets like that either – the shots are just phenomenal."

"An incredible record that sounds as modern today as it did when it first emerged. I was really struck just by this minimalist production and the atmosphere they captured on this record. It's just been one of these records that I go back to over and over again and it's been a real touchstone in my career. I just think it's so beautiful and so tastefully constructed. Again, it's also so unique. There's nobody else who has ever touched them. 

 They've made this insanely perfect record – and I rarely say that, that it is a perfect record – and I associate it with the emergence of myself as an adult where it just felt like a whole different universe than what I had experienced before. It sounded like a whole different planet. 

 I don't even know how to articulate why I love it so much, other than it is a perfect recording. I guess the aesthetic of Colossal Youth is that it is so disciplined. You don't really hear that very often, that real confidence just to let things be really simple and unembellished: it takes a lot of balls to do that [laughs]. I feel too that any new generation that was exposed to that record would find it as thrilling as I did back in the 1980s; you can't really say that about too many records."

"The last film is Animal House. Where I [veer] away from intense dramas. This thing is a perfect comedy, and I saw it right when it came out, as many people of my age did. It’s one of those films — I saw it one weekend; I went back to see it the next weekend and the next weekend. It’s a perfect piece of work and I watch it almost once a year. I’m no expert on it — can’t tell you the cast except for the big names — but it’s one of those things where I don’t even know if it’s any good. All I know is, I laughed in the same places, like Pavlov’s dog. “Hey, I’m a zit!” and the food comes out of [John] Belushi’s mouth — to me that is about the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Until he does this or until he does that. And you know: “A pledge pin on your uniform,” stuff like that. It’s funny down to my DNA. You know how it is with films. You love them so much, you almost adopt them. Like if there’s a song you really like — you almost kinda wrote it yourself. Because now it’s in your bone marrow. Animal House to me is from a much happier time of my life. As an adult I’m over-serious and worried. But as a younger person, that comedy was just so effortlessly immature and funny. The humor is not the highest brow, but it’s done so well. It works on every human cliche, like the drunk wife of the dean and the dean is over-serious… That was a film I watched usually around Christmas time. Somehow, I always find it in December and I watch it and I laugh sometimes, and I find myself crying because I miss Belushi. I think he was a great talent. I’ll watch him eating the food and I laugh so hard, literally, tears will go down my face. I don’t know the guy but I spoke to him once on the phone, briefly, but I just miss the guy. ‘Cause he’s one of my guys, like Bill Murray and Chevy Chase. All those SNL people — that’s my kind of humor. It’s just a perfect low budget comedy. It’s what you do with great acting and great writing. You don’t need a budget. You just need great acting and great writing."