"I heard The Afghan Whigs real early on and I was like, ‘Alright, this is like soul music but it’s played by white guys from Cincinnati, and I don’t even know if they can play that well.’ They eventually could play really well, and they turned me on to this whole other way of thinking that showed me you could mix all these things together without ever crossing over into pop music, which I felt when I was younger was just not something that I related to. Crime Scene Part One was a huge song for me because it was like a movie. It was brooding and there was something spooky about it, and then when you find out what it’s about it’s really scary. From there I went straight into Tom Waits.”"

"I got this when we were already started, it was when I raided the album closet of Elektra. It's one of the albums where it was, "Yeah, I gotta have this one". Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd traded off rhythm and lead, it'd be like their version of 'Dueling Banjos'! They took turns and there's all these different elements to it. That probably seeped in to [his and Black Francis' playing] on 'Monkey Gone To Heaven' through osmosis. We didn't mean it and it was just lucky. We just figure stuff out. Charles [Michael Kittridge Thompson IV, aka Black Francis] just leaves me alone when I'm doing my guitars. He would say "'Pixify' it", it's when the Pixies really become the Pixies. I'm just quoting him! It's kind of true in a little way. Of course it would be, that's the job, that's a lead guitarist's job, and Charles' job is to make Pixies songs and all that stuff. The guitar happens to be front and centre of the mix. They would even say it, "Now it's Joey's turn", and Charles would say: "Ah, now it's the Pixies.""