"This was a record I got in my youth; I was really, really young. My sister had previously turned me on to a lot of different music but this was the beginning of my own branching out. I was starting to get my own identity. I had gotten a few weird records of my own and one of them was KISS's Hotter Than Hell and this one came shortly afterwards. What a lot of people missed with Bowie was that he really knew how to jam on an acoustic. They were great pop rock songs but were mostly played on an acoustic. Of course he had a great lead guitar player in Mick Ronson and when you can mix that up with acoustic playing, then you've got something really cool. I have learned some of his songs and it may not be that the chord progressions are unusual, as some people say, but it's the exotic chord choices that make the music weird. Some of those chords always make me think of a dog when he turns his head sideways and looks at you as if to say, ""Are you going to eat that?"

"Royal Trux are a band I maybe got into four or five years ago. I think me liking them has a lot to do with just how good a guitar player Neil Hagerty is, but I like Royal Trux a lot more than any of the other bands he was in. It's just that feeling of when you're making music with the right person, a whole genre might evolve from it. They are completely unique and I think that he couldn't have done it without Jennifer Herrema - it could have only have ever been the two of them. That's what's so great about so many records I like... they often have a partnership of two people and their music couldn't have happened any other way. I feel The Horrors are like that a bit because we've seen so many bands come and go in the ten years since we've been a band. It feels like such a lottery whether a band stays together or not. But, on the other side of that, for us it feels like we could never actually break up. I guess that's an odd thing to say. That's about as optimistic as I get, probably."

"This album was massive for me. Still is. I first heard this on a cassette in the post from my brother with a note saying, "Demis Roussos on bass!" He put two tracks on there and they both blew my mind. I knew immediately I needed to find this record but was convinced it was incredibly obscure. A few weeks later, I was in this old drill hall in Falmouth that doubled up as a house-clearance furniture shop. Flicking through the records in there, between multiple copies of No Jacket Required and some Cornish male-voice choir stuff, there was 666. I bought it and raced home and was pretty pleased to hear it was a lot more bonkers than I could ever have imagined. This album is properly bonkers. The gatefold sleeve has a 2CV crashed into a wall; the music is so incredibly inspirational. As a piece of work it's outside of any frame of reference – it's like discovering a new colour or a new flavour. Every time I see a copy I have to buy it – I give it to anyone I know who doesn't have it yet."

"After Adrian and I broke up, and I moved into my new house, I bought myself a record player. Or, actually, if either of my kids are reading this, Father Christmas bought it for me [laughs]. Not that I think they'd be reading The Quietus yet – they're six and eight – but start them young. My mum brought me some records, and this is one she used to love when I was really small, although I only vaguely remembered it. I've always loved Maddy Prior and June Tabor's voices, though – do you know June Tabor's Abyssinians? That's an amazing record, full of depth and darkness, both in the singing, and the material. But listening to this…it made me think I'm sure it subsconsciously affected the way I make music. The way the women's voices interweave to tell their stories reminds me very much of the way Becky and I sing together, although she didn't remember the record at all! The band's also fantastic, including Martin Carthy, Nic Jones and Andy Irvine. The effect of this record on me is what I'd love to do every time making music."

"This reminds me of my dad. He was into liberation drum circles in the Matabele community in Zimbabwe and he worked with people from that community. This is a record from the Ndebele language. Nothembi is an amazing guitarist and it's a rocking album with amazing synths as well. I've been playing this quite a bit over the past year. I almost got to play with her but she didn't turn up. My dad used to listen to Thomas Mapfumo - who supported The Stone Roses at Spoke Island - and I thought this was really funny [at the time] - I should have asked my dad to come along to that gig! My influences for music were more down to my big brother and sister and my mam was into different music again. It's inevitable that you are influenced by people around you. I'd get Anglo-American punk rock and pop music from my brother and sister but my dad wasn't into that; [for him] reggae was acceptable and maybe Welsh language pop. He didn't engage with music to the point where he had influenced my sound whereas my brother and sister's records influenced me directly."

"Nobody knows about Melanie in America really, and you know, I only just realised that she was such a big influence on me. The way she sings, absolutely. People would be like, 'What are your influences?', and they would compare me to Janis, but that's because they don't know Melanie. 'Lay Down'? It gives me chills. I got to cover that with Mark Ronson and his band, it was one of the best moments of my fucking life. 'Animal Crackers'? She's so hilarious. I have this haircut because I wanted to look like her on the cover of Gather Me. And I think one of the most beautiful songs in the fucking world, especially as someone who plays music, is 'Look What They've Done To My Song Ma'. That's one of my favourites. I love her so much. But of all her album I couldn't take Photograph off. See, I could have chosen 13 Melanie records! I just had to pick one, so I picked Photograph. 'Cyclone' is such a big song for me. I found it at a yard sale, or maybe a Good Will, but I got it second-hand and it was already really worn out and that's where I started getting really deep and I would look for her everywhere. A lot of times she was on compilations or Greatest Hits compilations, and it would be so weird, because apart from 'Brand New Key', you didn't hear her on the radio, and you'd think, where was this a hit? I would look for her everywhere. And the thing is, you had to work so hard to get a jam back then. Now you can just Google it up, but that's what started me onto Melanie, my mom singing 'Brand New Key' to me and then finding the record and going from there. Every time, if I looked hard, I would find one of her records."