"This song is really important. I fell in love with it when it was released about ten years ago and we played it at our wedding. It’s really bittersweet, about wishing someone you’ve left high and dry the best of luck, wondering what went wrong and hoping that wherever they are, they’re going to find a path and be OK. There’s a lot of question marks in the song and it’s absolutely beautiful. I think I heard it on a radio station in Los Angeles, it didn’t get Top 40 radio play but one of the public access stations, KCRW plays a lot of new music. It struck me as a beautifully well-crafted song and again it’s a song I wish I’d written. He hit the nail on the head, there’s a lot of questioning going on, regret and searching within yourself, trying to reconcile what happened and trying to move forward. We did play a few upbeat songs at the wedding post the ceremony itself at the reception, but my wife and I also wanted to play some songs that meant something to us. Some of those songs are dark and sad, but sometimes those kind of songs make me feel good. We played ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ as we came up to the altar, it was in a park, so it wasn’t really an altar, it was a non-religious wedding. We left the spot where we got married and played this as we walked up to the reception, with these outdoor tables for us and our friends to hang out. Some people might have thought it was an odd choice, but I was deeply moved by it and still am when I hear that song. This song moves me to tears every time I hear it, I swear to God. It’s probably in my top ten songs of all time. I have a list on my Mac that I call my ‘bummer songs’, because when I listen to bummer songs they make me feel good for some reason and this is the first song on the list."

"I got a cassette from a cousin of mine that had The Offspring, Smash, on one side and Nirvana's Bleach on the other. That was definitely the wake-up call of rebellion and antagonism, but the first record I really got into from thereon was Surfer Rosa. It felt so alien but so familiar. It really clicked on a bone marrow level that felt like it had pre-existed for me. I bought Death To The Pixies at the same time on tape from HMV in Oxford and I just became obsessed with that record. I listened to it again recently and it reminded me particularly about how I could connect with Frank Black's lyrics despite not being aware of any real narrative when I was much younger. I don't think Foals would exist without the Pixies. I love the oddness and the strangeness of the Hispanic/punk/pop influence - it should be wrong, it shouldn't work but it does, really well. More recently I re-listened to his lyrics and appreciated how humorous they are, which reminded me that things don't need to be too obvious or narrative-based, they can be just fragments of thought. It opened the gateway into everything that then consumed me for the next ten years (Oxes, Albini, Sonic Youth, Godspeed - the American guitar alt/post-hardcore/post-rock world). Without Surfer Rosa I may have stayed with Nirvana and The Offspring…"

"Moving to New York from Ohio in 1976, it was an opportunity for me to just basically gorge myself on films that I had never had an opportunity to see before. There were so many theaters, so many repertory theaters showing films. You could see three films for a dollar, you could see prints of these movies, and I was watching a lot of films. In 1977, Saturday Night Fever came out, and it was the first time I remember seeing a film twice. Sitting there and watching it once and sitting there and watching it again. Another musical choice, but different than A Hard Day’s Night because it felt like it really captured what was going on — at least what I felt was going on in New York at that particular time. Travolta’s performance in that film is one of the top ten performances I think I’ve seen in film in my entire life: very real portrayal of a character, the relationships all feel very authentic and real, and it’s got an energy and an emotional intensity that really stuck with me. Sticks with me all these years later. I always wanted to see someone do a sequel to it — not the sequel that exists, not Staying Alive, but the sequel that felt like — it would be interesting if someone would go back to do a Creed sort of version of where those characters are now."

"This is a fascinating record and it has such an amazing story. Marc Hollander was Aksak Maboul, they were his crew in the 80s, and he started Crammed Discs in Belgium. He was married (still is) to Veronique Vincent [of the Honeymoon Killers]and they were recording an album in I think about 1983, and then a baby arrived, so that took over. So they left the record practically finished but not quite finished, in the drawer. And then another baby arrived, so that record got even further and deeper into its drawer! It got forgotten. And then some years ago they discovered it, and played it and thought okay, this is good stuff. Obviously Marc had the label, so they mixed it and released it, and there it was: the Ex-Futur Album. My personal connection to this record is that people kept saying oh, it sounds like Stereolab, except they did it ten years before we did! They're sort of our parents, and that's really amazing to me. We've been separated and found again later on; it's a really lovely experience, and it also makes so much sense with the kind of label that Marc is running. It's very open, and they're very open-minded people, accepting the differences, and it's what I find most attractive: the fusion, when you go get some DNA from here and there and over here and then cram it all into a song."