"This is off the back of Faust IV being my all-time favourite record. Fille Qui Mousse translates to 'Girl Foam' which is the best name for a project. I found this, again, about a year-and-a-half ago when we were trying to buy records for the apartment. I was in a record shop called Permanent Records in Eagle Rock [in Los Angeles]. I sometimes struggle going to record shops as they are often overwhelming, but in Permanent Records everything was in its right place and the staff would write little notes on the records. There was a sticker that said, ""Do you like Faust IV? Then you will love this record!"" That was enough for me, so I bought it. It's one of those records I put on when I have started cooking or something and I will forget that the record is on. Something will happen on the record and I will think, ""Oh my god, this is amazing!"" It is just the spilling out of someone's brains – it's playful and has hints of the United States Of America at points but then it is totally steeped in this weird jazz-Krautrock. There is a track on it called 'Magic-Bag' which is just the guy singing along to the drums and playing the same rhythm as what he is singing and there is water running in the background. The first time I took notice of the song I thought it was so shit. I don't know exactly what he is singing, but it sounds like ""I like my chunky rocky lane"" and then there is a huge gap and there is water running and he comes back singing ""I like my chunky rocky lane"". The fact that he liked his 'chunky rocky lane' made me realise it was one of the best songs on the album. It's a record that can suddenly surprise you. It's when you are trying to get your teeth into something and at the beginning it is difficult but it keeps reappearing and ends up being something absolutely incredible that you end up loving. It's hugely playful, weird and beautiful at points and abrasive at others. It's huge fun to listen to."

"This is another record that I think Chris Bear might have found when we were twenty-one, twenty-two maybe, right before the band became Grizzly Bear. It’s a seven-minute, classic metal song with an almost Bowie-esque vocal delivery, it’s raging guitar music basically and I still love that kind of stuff. I had a deep metal phase as a kid, I loved Metallica and that kind of thing, but this is more in the Black Sabbath realm of heavy. “I’ve got a really strong memory of listening to this with Chris Bear and Chris Taylor. We had this phase between nineteen and twenty-two where we kept trying to be a band but it never really worked out. It didn’t happen until they’d started Grizzly Bear, I was the last guy to join, but when we were bonding over music around then it started to make sense we’d play together eventually. “We loved this song, it’s so classically heavy and cool and maybe it’s that, learning to appreciate music for what it is and not thinking about what it means, or if it’s moving you. It’s not cheesy or over the top, there’s a subtlety to it, it’s tasteful without trying or overthinking it. “We saw Danava play a few times in tiny clubs and they were incredible We saw lots of super-heavy music between 2004 and 2006 and being around New York was amazing for that, even Animal Collective were like that then, you’d see these crazy, heavy shows that were super-energetic and vibrant. “There’s not much documentation about this, but on our first couple of tours there was more of a heavier energy, musically it was much more improvised, frenetic and busy, closer to jazz. Our early live incarnation was somewhere between this and Elvin Jones, trying to channel this heavy energy. “It’s another one of those touchstones we talked about a lot when we were younger, not that it really made its way into our music very much, we never really made full on metal, but there’s occasional moments where that energy creeps in."

"This was a record that Chris Taylor or Chris Bear introduced me to in college. We were eighteen or nineteen in New York, they were studying music and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing! I was trying to be serious about linguistics but I was kind of bullshitting myself. “I’d started writing songs but I was very secretive about it and didn’t take it seriously. I played them to Chris Taylor, he was probably the first person who heard anything I’d done, but I refused to admit to myself that I took it seriously in any real way. When I went to college I decided I wasn’t going to do music, because there was no reason for another white kid to play jazz guitar. I ended up finding songwriting instead and it became a different thing. “This is a reference point we’ve talked about over the years, when one of us mentions this record, everybody knows what we’re talking about, we talked about it on Painted Ruins in certain places. The whole basis of the groove is built on an organ drum machine and the sound of it is very ahead of its time. It’s very groovy but it’s not beating you over the head, it’s an emotional tune that has this subtly danceable beating heart. There’s a soulfulness and dreaminess to it, it accesses the emotional part of you with this really pointed and tight rhythmic quality. “We never wanted to approach music from a folky songwriter’s standpoint. Certain parts of our music have come out that way because of what we play, but it’s remembering what it was like as a teenager, being really into music from a players’ perspective and finding the emotional quality in that, trying to build something that’s soulful and hits you without beating you over the head. I love it when people can pull off that subtlety, where they’re barely touching the instrument but there’s this rhythmic quality to it. “’Aht Uh Mi Hed’ is a touchstone that’s stuck with us, it’s an aspect of music that we really appreciate. We don’t actively strive towards it, but it never quite leaves our minds."