"I chose it mostly for its beauty. I like the heart-wrenching minor chords. I'm a bit of a sucker for that, and again I find there is such a soothing quality to this record. It is on the melancholic side of things; it's not a sunshine album. But it is the kind of album where if you're not feeling too great you put it on and think oh well, there are people feeling much worse than I am! So cheer up! It has that kind of effect. I'm particularly in love with the string arrangements. I don't know who did them; I don't read the liner notes, but they really work for me. Beck worked with Thurston Moore on Demolished Thoughts, and again there is the same kind of string arrangement that comes in and out of songs. It holds much emotional power. In the earlier parts of the 90s we played some concerts with Sonic Youth, Beck and us, and festivals as well. He was a really good person to come across. I haven't crossed paths with Beck for many years now, but he is someone I would really like to work with, just on the strength of that production and those strings. I think we share musical terrain and I'd really love to work with him."

"People might question this but Rudderless, which was directed by my husband [William H. Macy]. But I say Rudderless because of two things. One is because of the way the movie was structured, and the way Bill directed it. The audience got to experience in a small way, I think, what parents get to experience when their child does something horrific. That you’re going along with one experience of your child, which is, “He or she is like this, and this is the kind of person they are, and I love them dearly.” And then they do some horrific, incomprehensible action and it pulls the rug out from under you. And Bill did that and the movie Rudderless does that; it pulls a rug out from under you. Your breath gets knocked out of you, you go, “[Gasp].” And suddenly you are reevaluating Billy Crudup’s relationship with his son from a completely different perspective and, again, I just think that’s masterful storytelling. The other reason is Billy Crudup’s performance. And, acting with Billy Crudup, I mean, what, did I do two scenes with him, maybe three? It really changed the target for me. I went, “Oh that’s what good acting is.” Really, and it really informed my work on American Crime. So for me it was a clinic on great acting. So for those two reasons."

"I just feel like that’s a movie that I saw when I was a kid, and you watch it over and over and over again, and you’re like, “Oh, Steve Martin’s doing bits, but they fit a story.” And it’s beautifully shot and directed by Carl Reiner, which some people don’t realize, and I just can’t think of a movie that informed my comedic personality more than The Jerk. It’s also a dumb character… it breaks all these stupid rules that Hollywood has for the sake of humor, and for the sake of jokes, and it’s a feel-good movie. Oh, man. I watch it over and over and over again. It’s got bits of Woody Allen’s kind of mysticalism, but it’s not. It’s jokey but the jokes don’t have punchlines. It’s like a Steve Martin album live, and they did a good job with making it a story. In a lot of ways you have no Borat without The Jerk, you have no anything, Lebowski; all those characters are Jerk-inspired. I play dumb quite a bit; I’ll say that right now. I don’t know if you call it a crutch, or what, but I tend to lean dumb… I don’t think I would have been able to get away with that had it not been for that movie."

"The next movie would probably be Young Frankenstein. I remember going to see that as a kid. Because I loved all the Universal horror films, but I had only seem them on TV, like on Creature Double Feature on Friday afternoons. By that point I loved Gene Wilder, because I made the connection like, “Oh, that guy was in Willy Wonka. Now he’s in Young Frankenstein.” So that movie blew me away. And even to this day, I watch it all the time. It’s such an incredible movie because it’s really, really funny, with such incredible performances, but it’s so beautifully made. Nobody would spend the time now to make a comedy that well. Visually and technically, it’s so incredible. It doesn’t date; it holds up. Peter Boyle’s perfect, and Madeline Kahn and Gene Wilder, and everybody. It’s just an incredible movie. It really captured the feel of those Universal films, like Bride of Frankenstein, yet it is really funny. It’s something that almost never works. You know, kind of look at the Munsters on TV, and the Addams family, where you could get into it and they have the art direction there and everyone’s funny, but it almost never works. It’s almost always a disaster, and that film is just so perfect. I think the fact that people were brave enough back then to release black-and-white movies."

"Listening to this in Brazil a few years ago was a proper Eureka moment for me. We'd moved to the middle of nowhere for seven months, and I decided to properly have some time properly listening to music, so got a lot of stuff off Thom on a hard drive. I was really into Burial and that side of dubstep back then. Stuff that works perfectly underneath railway arches at 3am strangely enough didn't resonate on the edge of the rainforest, though. What did was Screamadelica. 

I'd first heard Loaded when I was studying at Manchester University in 1990. I remember it coming out after 'Fools Gold' and 'Hallelujah', and seeing Primal Scream on a double-header with Looper. I remember thinking, ah, this is good, a bit different for them, but they're jumping on the bandwagon, aren't they? Later, 'Don't Fight It Feel It' became the ultimate tune of that time for me. But away from that time, this album still stands alone. It's so colourful. It's like gospel dance music. It's got all the euphoria of house music, plus the community and love. It reminded me that that moment in culture wasn't just about the drugs – those drugs were just there to pierce the veil. Music held the ultimate power to bring people up. I want my music to have that joy, that light, that sense of possibility."