"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."

"I’m sometimes a little ashamed at how little attention I pay to lyrics, especially as I am a lyricist myself. Consequently, albums seem to mean entirely different things to me to their intention. Music transports me; it allows me to travel through time. When I listen to Penguin Eggs, I am back to when I was going through my divorce, huddled in a blanket, taking too many of the wrong pills and listening to this over and over. Which isn't to say this record makes me sad either. It reminds of the comfort that music can bring in the worst possible moments. This album of sea shanties was a lifeboat for me; it still is."

"Yes, Cassavetes again, and by now it’s a no-brainer as to who my favorite filmmaker is. This time he takes on the gangster/noir genre but does it in his own inimitable abstract-expressionist style, where time slows down or sometimes speeds up, so we never know exactly where we are in terms of a traditional story arc or act structures. We are in dreamland . . . an opium-induced reverie. This is a portrait of an artist in the guise of a strip club owner, and Ben Gazzara’s Cosmo Vitelli is a career-topping performance. The onstage burlesque routines are worth the price of admission, as is the one and only Mr. Sophistication, played by Meade Roberts."