"You asked for albums, but albums are already a bit away from pop because of they're a more serious proposition, so all of these are albums that I own on vinyl, and because I'm of a certain age that's what I think of as a record. We didn't have a big record collection in our house when I was growing up, but my mum had three Beatles albums, Sgt Pepper, Revolver and Abbey Road. Even though I was a kid I could tell that Sgt Pepper and Revolver sounded like music that had happened a while ago, but Abbey RoadM sounded more modern. It still does sound quite modern, because on second side where all the songs run into each other, that's quite a thing, not many people had done that since and not many have since. There's an art to an album. If you've got an album that's got a shit song on it, especially if it's in the middle of a side, you're not going to play it as much because you know you're going to have to get up and skip that track. That's what I've tried to do with these, it's records that I don't mind putting on then you can relax or talk to people or whatever, but you know you're not going to get some kind of fucking horrible shitty stinker of a song on it. Abbey Road - I was young at the time, 10, 11, 12, whatever, and the track that ends side one, 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' that was mind-blowing to me, the way it went on and on and on at the end, with this big synthy wooshy noise. I've since found out its Ringo playing this machine that sounds like wind that you get in classical orchestras. It was a psychedelic experience in a living room in a normal part of Sheffield in the early 70s, where, you know, psychedelic experiences weren't that common. I'll always remember it, that song in particularly took me somewhere. And that's the end of that side - if you had Abbey Road on CD it wouldn't be right, it only really works as a statement if you listen to it for ages and then it suddenly stops and then you're left in silence for a while until you can be bothered to get up and start again. I started with this because it plays with what an album can be. It's great.
"

"I heard 'Novocaine For The Soul' on the radio and bought the album the very next day. And with their second record, I got it expecting more of the same. This was pre-internet, so there wasn't a lot of information about it, but it would appear that he lost his sister and mum, and so he wrote this record about being in hospital and watching people die. It was extremely sad, and for a teenager it was like, ""Holy shit! What is this?!"" Kids are always intrigued by sob stories of one kind or another - Nirvana being a perfect example - but this guy had clearly been through a lot. He writes very short and simple yet very affecting songs, not produced in a twee way, but very cold and using lots of samples. They didn't really sound like a band at all. Again, they were a three-piece, and a very simple band. He had a really cool voice and a story to tell, and that again really made me think about the fact that the band doesn't have to be that thing which I always thought they were: that you played your drums and you play your bass, when actually it can be anything you want. That really influenced the way I write music. I used a lot more technology after I got into that album. I started to integrate my live sounds - my guitar for example - with my laptop, and I started using a lot more sampling, thinking I want to be a lot more like Eels. I think an element of his very black humour has crept into my music. You always get the sense that he is talking about something very grave, but he does so in a slightly distracting way. Take 'Susan's House': it's got this ridiculous, quite clearly silly motif, which sounds like Neighbours - he knows it does! He's talking about his problems at Susan's house as he's walking past all these awful things in the street, like a kid who has been shot and a pregnant teenager, but it's couched in this happy, jaunty, slightly sarcastic world, and that is precisely where I'm at in my own music. Like the song 'Get To Heaven' is all about the same thing, walking past horrors but with a smile on your face, whistling a jaunty tune. I think a lot of influence came from Mr Everett, because of his outlook on life, where you can be in a very dark position but music doesn't have to abide by those rules, it can subvert it."

"Sgt Pepper’s was my childhood Beatles record. Again, it’s moving, but in quite an abstract way, just describing what she’s leaving behind. You don’t ever hear where she’s gone or why, but you get these little hints: she’s leaving home after living alone and yet her Mum and Dad are there. It’s all done with McCartney’s jovial style but it’s got this sadness in it, which I think he’s really good at - he’s done it lots of times, with ‘Eleanor Rigby’ being the absolute epitome of it. “But that whole album made an impact on me as a kid. It’s a kind of dark, sickly-feeling album to me. It’s not very comfortable, it’s trippy and weird. You don’t really know where you are with it, it’s colourful, but in a ghoulish way. It’s a scary record for a child, because it’s just so weird. And ‘She’s Leaving Home’ holds you a bit closer than the other songs I think, even though it’s about someone leaving home. I also like the musical elements - the melody and the structure of it. “The Beatles have been an ongoing influence in my life and I think if you like them as a child you’re always going to like them. But the great thing about The Beatles is the breadth and the evolution of their records, if you’re not feeling ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ anymore, you can dip in at different points and find different sides to them. ""There’s so many things they touched on. ‘Helter Skelter’ is basically the whole of The Who’s output in one song; the post-rock elements of ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’, that’s a fucking genre now! And they just did it for a laugh and never did it again. There’s so many little flashes like that and more than anything it just makes me feel like it would have been so amazing to have been around in a time when nothing’s been done. “The other great thing about the Beatles was that they put stuff on those records specifically for children, tracks like ‘Octopus’s Garden’. I think that’s something that’s been completely lost now, because children are given adult themes in a friend way now, rather than saying, “Here’s something you might actually like, being a child. Don’t worry about the other stuff.” Although funnily enough, with Get To Heaven we got so many people telling us that their children really liked it. We were really pleased about that - maybe it’s the colourful nature of it. It’s definitely something I want to explore more."