"This is from Live-Evil, which is a really intense and brutal album, but ‘Little Church’ is a little three-minute moment that’s a really beautiful, otherworldly, disorientating and extremely contained song within a crazy, fiery record. “It’s amazing what this pulls off in three minutes. The lead is somebody whistling in combination with a trumpet, there’s this moving, really melodic bassline and a crazy organ sound swirling around the entire track to this beautiful, almost Brazilian chord progression, but there’s no rhythm whatsoever. It’s so unique and I’d never heard that kind of tonality or sensibility. “It probably relates more to the kind of songwriting that we do rather than jazz, it’s not really jazz, it’s closer to Brazilian music or like writing a ballad, but without words. It’s another one of those songs I’ve always come back to, I still refer and think back to it when we’re making records as an example of a certain kind of energy, vibe and intensity. “It sounds like it’s on another planet, I couldn’t have imagined hearing anything like this before I heard it and as soon as I did it transported me in a way that I’d never experienced, it was like entering a dream world. That’s something I always think of as a goal in making music, entering a landscape, a dream-like state or trance, like accessing something outside of your own reality. I love when music can do that, it feels like you’re entering another reality basically. “I first heard this when I was fourteen and when you’re that age the serotonin in your brain functions so differently, everything means so much more. Your brain chemistry changes over time, it’s still fun, but you’ve got to work a little harder to make it as fun as when you were younger, but because I still have that memory, I can kind of conjure the same serotonin rush it gave me as a kid. “You learn to appreciate other sides of music as you get older, you can access the same kind of stimulation without it being this overwhelming serotonin blast."

"This is another record that I think Chris Bear might have found when we were twenty-one, twenty-two maybe, right before the band became Grizzly Bear. It’s a seven-minute, classic metal song with an almost Bowie-esque vocal delivery, it’s raging guitar music basically and I still love that kind of stuff. I had a deep metal phase as a kid, I loved Metallica and that kind of thing, but this is more in the Black Sabbath realm of heavy. “I’ve got a really strong memory of listening to this with Chris Bear and Chris Taylor. We had this phase between nineteen and twenty-two where we kept trying to be a band but it never really worked out. It didn’t happen until they’d started Grizzly Bear, I was the last guy to join, but when we were bonding over music around then it started to make sense we’d play together eventually. “We loved this song, it’s so classically heavy and cool and maybe it’s that, learning to appreciate music for what it is and not thinking about what it means, or if it’s moving you. It’s not cheesy or over the top, there’s a subtlety to it, it’s tasteful without trying or overthinking it. “We saw Danava play a few times in tiny clubs and they were incredible We saw lots of super-heavy music between 2004 and 2006 and being around New York was amazing for that, even Animal Collective were like that then, you’d see these crazy, heavy shows that were super-energetic and vibrant. “There’s not much documentation about this, but on our first couple of tours there was more of a heavier energy, musically it was much more improvised, frenetic and busy, closer to jazz. Our early live incarnation was somewhere between this and Elvin Jones, trying to channel this heavy energy. “It’s another one of those touchstones we talked about a lot when we were younger, not that it really made its way into our music very much, we never really made full on metal, but there’s occasional moments where that energy creeps in."

"This next one is controversial. It's Spiderland by Slint. It actually pipped out Isn't Anything by My Bloody Valentine. They did that because one of the reasons that I really love Isn't Anything is the sound of the guitars (and it's a wonderful record, don't get me wrong) but there's another record coming up that took that place. I think Spiderland was quite a transformative record when I first heard it. It was Dominic played it to me. When we started the band we made mixtapes for each other of music that we liked, which was good actually because apart from one or two, I'd never heard of any of the bands that Dominic liked. He put 'Washer' on that tape and it totally blew my mind… I actually even remember what part of the motorway I was on driving back from Dominic's house to my house when it kicked in back loud. I do have a good memory for motorways. It's got a unique atmosphere to it, it does make sense but it doesn't make sense. It's got a really eerie atmosphere, a really strange album. I love it lots. It didn't really annoy me [that Mogwai were compared to Slint] because a lot of it was through ignorance. We don't actually sound like Slint at all. A couple of songs had little sections that maybe did, ‘Christmas Steps' has a little bit in it that's Slint-ish, but I think a lot of the people that said that just didn't like us and just said that. A lot of those people probably adore Rid Of Me by PJ Harvey, which does sound like Slint! That's a great record too, but musically sounds a lot more similar to Slint than anything we did. But no, that doesn't bother me. Lance Bangs has made a film about Slint, and from what I saw of the bit they showed at ATP, I think it's going to be the best film about a rock band ever made. Unbelievable. I think people are going to be quite taken aback when they see the story of the band."