"I got into him a long time ago; again, around the time I was going to university. I think I had a collection that came out around then called Way To Blue. I remember really liking it but perhaps I was too young for it at the time. It wasn’t until a few years later that I went back to it and they’re all just genius. There’s not a bad song on any of those records but I particularly got into the story of him. It’s so sad, you just want to go back in time and try and change it. It must have been so frustrating for him to craft these... I don’t think anyone sounds like Nick Drake and I get furious when people say he’s a kind of folk musician because I just think that’s bullshit. [laughs] Well, maybe it’s not bullshit because he comes from a tradition of songs that have a kind of folk influence in the way that they’re played, and the use of the natural world with stories removed from modern society, I suppose that’s kind of folksy, but for me it’s a bit more, dare I say, a bit more special than that."

"Kristin Hersh is no ordinary musician, and her mind is unlike any other. In her memoir, Paradoxical Undressing, she captures what it’s like to be young and starting out, but this is a grazed reality, the top layer of skin stripped clean away. The book is based on a diary she kept when she was 18, which is, as she says, “the age when no one takes care of you”. It was a year when everything happened. She moved her band, Throwing Muses, from Providence, Rhode Island, to Boston. She was diagnosed as a schizophrenic, then bipolar. She was offered her first recording contract, with 4AD. She discovered she was pregnant. And she became unlikely friends with faded Hollywood movie star, Betty Hutton. “Betty sings about starlight and champagne,” Hersh writes. “I sing about dead rabbits and blow jobs.” Though Hutton was unpredictable and fragile (“Time is like a hurricane to her – a big, fast mess, sweeping her away”) she was also full of generosity, compassion and advice. “You have to leave things out to tell a story,” she once told Hersh. And Hersh listened. This female Kurt Cobain – he was a fan of her work – has forged her own brave path, often against enormous odds. And she writes better sentences than most writers do."

"I only heard about Parallelograms when I was asked to participate in a show that was her first performance ever in 2008. I didn't know her music and I just went into it learning the song 'Delicious'. It was pretty different to hers. I met her and talked to her briefly and we stayed in touch. Then later she came over to my place and it turned out she was writing again. She's a full-time dental hygienist now and she doesn't have a lot of time so it was useful for her to have another musician to work with. What I love about this record is the incredible arrangements - instruments are just there when you need them. They were done by Leonard Rosenman who's a pretty well known film composer. He was trying to become a producer and here you can hear what a delicate sensibility he has for timbre and tone. Linda had a huge role in that - I mean, she's not always delicate. But there is so much range and texture and dynamic. The songs are beautiful and the songs are incredible. Everything is done right, just so right, and done for the right reasons - for the love of music, clearly."