"This is the most contemporary record of the lot. They're a West Coast band. There's one track on there called 'Valiant Brave', which is one the most extraordinary songs I've heard in many years. It sounds like an Apache war cry recorded on the backside of a mountain somewhere. It's the most indescribable record. I'd love to have written it. There's just two chords and the arrangement is quite unusual. It hit me first time round and I was listening to it over and over. Then I bought the album. The rest of the album is very tight harmony work. They sound like sons of the Beach Boys. It's encouraging to hear a young band sound that good. It's purist. It's where the Fleet Foxes are going. It's a lovely record. Primarily I find new music by people telling me about bands, but I like the Uncut and Mojo magazine sampler CDs – they've got a wealth of tracks by new bands, underground bands. That's where I heard 'Valient Brave'. When you're making a living out of music and writing, there's such a lot to learn from what's already been recorded. It'd take you a lifetime to appreciate what's been done. But it's great when something is out on its own and you hit on something new; when someone's hit on a pulse and it's not derivative. Very early Blur were really good and the first Supergrass EP was fabulous. That was the last time it got exciting for me. Damon [Albarn] gave me a cuddle at the Hootenanny recently and told me he loved me."

"I often listen to Simon & Garfunkel now and think they’re terribly produced, but they’re certainly a band who are perfect performers on record. There’s something to be said for their restraint; on a lot of tracks you think there might be a drummer but it’s just so quiet in the mix. When you think about what The Beatles were producing at the same time it’s kind of crazy actually - but it doesn’t matter, because their voices were always there when you needed them and that was all you were listening to essentially. They would supply the harmony for each other, as well as the melody and the words. “’Wednesday Morning, 3am’ has got this absolute perfection to it. Fleet Foxes get pretty close in terms of recording multiple voices, but it’s not somewhere people tend to go. I loved it so much, because you could sing with it and you didn’t even have to sing either of their parts; there was always room for more. I always liked choral music growing up, but I felt that this was what choral music should be doing. “I’ve always loved this particular song: just the sadness in it, the description of his girlfriend and the description of having to go because he’s committed a crime. It’s a really weird angle about these few hours he’s got left and it makes me sad every time I hear it. There’s loads of stuff that I didn’t understand in it too: a ‘hard liquor store’ for example. I had no idea what that meant! But they went to dark places. “By the time I’d heard something like ‘7 O’Clock News/Silent Night’ the whole collage thing had been done so much and it didn’t seem that powerful to me. You’ve seen a hundred films that do it now and having sample speech in songs isn’t that crazy. But I bet when it first came out it would have been pretty amazing."