"I first met Bradford Cox in 2008. I had just gotten into Deerhunter, and we both played the Pitchfork festival that year. I just saw him around backstage and went and talked to him, and we ended up sitting on this ledge, watching people stream out of the festival. We became friends, and he ended up playing with us the next day. And then we took them out for the Transference tour. After Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, I thought Spoon was going to keep going up and up and up—and in terms of selling tickets, it has. I knew Transference was an uglier record that didn’t have as many hits on it, but I still thought everybody that bought Ga Ga Ga was going to buy it. I wasn’t exactly right. I don’t think we failed on that record, but it did turn a lot of people off."

"1999 was a strange and transitional year. The second half of the ’80s and the ’90s were about dance music. That’s all there was. I remember when drum‘n’bass hit, we were, like, “Why would you want to listen to anything else?” Then that started to finish toward the end of the ’90s, and people in the underground were making records that weren’t dance music but were still credible. To Rococo Rot wasn’t just about playing, it was about machines as well. They somehow embodied both Krautrock and post-rock in an interesting and Berlin way. When Wire did our tour in 2000, we were two dates in and we started to notice that that every venue was playing Soundgarden before our sets. We had a copy of The Amateur View, and our sound person would put that on and just calm the audience down."

"MewithoutYou are a post-hardcore band who suddenly released this weird folk concept album. This was after I released Poetry Of The Deed in 2009 and I started to feel slightly like I had run into a brick wall as a songwriter. I was thinking maybe my road was run. I heard that record and instantly went, ‘Oh f***, there’s so much more to do' My American tour manager played me that record and I lost my mind. It is one of the most brilliantly written, composed and arranged records I’ve ever heard. It almost shamed me into not giving up. There’s that tendency that some people have that, because they’re not feeling inspired, then music is over in some way. We’ve just had Kasabian talking about it recently. I was guilty of it. I heard that record and instantly went, 'Oh fuck, there’s so much more to do."

"This is another one our former drummer Davy introduced me to; he’s a DJ and has the most amazing collection. He pointed me towards Sea and Cake back when I was 19. To this day, that song never gets old, ever. I can and have listened to this over and over again on repeat. It’s just the prettiest song, and this is such a good record overall. Sea and Cake have been around for a long time and have a lot of albums; they’re kinda mellow but there’s some – I don’t want to say prog – but at times they can be a little mathy and kind of jazzy. Just beautiful. I haven’t seen them live. I only found out a couple of years ago while we were on tour that the drummer John McEntire also plays for Tortoise. I love ‘em both! Exciting trivia!"

"This is a song that I fell in love with on a trip to New Zealand and Australia. It was my first vacation without my family and I took my friend John with me. ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ was the first song we heard even before we landed - I think it was playing on the flight. We got to Australia and just kept it on repeat, it was our party anthem for the entire trip. “When we got to New Zealand, we did a Lord of the Rings helicopter tour and after that we took off we played the song on repeat for the whole journey for almost two hours straight. Since then it’s remained one of my favourite songs of all time. I’m planning to get the lyrics tattooed on my arm - I think probably the first verse, on my shoulder in a circle."

"Like Mulatu Astake, this is just music that's in its own universe. I don't really know how to play the piano - I never took lessons or anything - so it's all just based on music that I like, but a few songs on Oh My God are definitely influenced by her way of playing, this really quick hammering on the keys, that's kind of unconventional. “I was on tour and we went to visit our friend Heidi in Amsterdam. She had a record on a small, little portable record player and it was playing Emahoy’s music. It was this beautiful piano music and I felt like I'd never heard anything like it. The scene was really nice: she was hanging clothes up in the backyard. it was a nice day out and it just hit me really hard. I asked her ' What is this?' and then I became obsessed with it."

"The New York Times asked me to review Keith Richards’ rock and roll memoir, Life. Due to a printing delay, I was reading and writing my impression of his chronicle while I was out on tour myself. It was a delight to immerse myself in such a jaw-dropping account of the peripatetic lifestyle I was experiencing, albeit at a much shallower altitude. The Rolling Stones are iconic by any measure. Getting an all access pass backstage through Richards’s eyes to the world beyond the bright lights and throbbing amplifiers is as thrilling as you might imagine. You will laugh out in parts, nod in recognition at the famous cultural touch-points and feel proud to be a music fan. Rock and roll has a very specific ethos, and Life hits upon all of the sacred precepts. Plug it in and turn it up to 11."