"Wong Kar-Wai is one of my favorite directors from Asia. I’m a natural romantic. I feel like his movies — slow motion, the momentum of people, even a clock running — are non-traditional filmmaking. Normal movies [have scenes set up] like, I talk to you; you talk to me. Those kinds of movies are boring to me, but his films are advanced. He’s also extremely private and personal. His stories are all about innocent love, sort of like teenage love. How people need; how you love. They’re very, very romantic. When I talk about it, I feel this slow motion romance, high heels, the mystery of women, sexy, walking by. I recognize things in my soul that are unspoken; a lot of those longings, and unfulfilled romances, and dreams within [Wong Kar-Wai’s] films — they make me feel that."

"I played British and Irish folk in an early band I had. We only performed one show and Rostam [Batmanglij, Vampire Weekend multi-instrumentalist] was also in the group, so this was the roots of Vampire Weekend. We covered 'Matty Groves' from this album. It's a traditional song about adultery, anger and sex, and I thought it was cool that they could take ancient-sounding stories and make them relevant. It's an important lesson – if you want to reinvent the wheel, maybe pop music isn't for you. As much as it's about being progressive, it's also rooted in a certain respect for the form. Which might seem paradoxical, but that's what pop music is – it combines very old ideas with very new sounds. Fairport are an example of that, taking very old songs in the English language and reinventing them."