"Elvis Costello changed everything for me. I had to have everything he made and I had to hear it all. I loved everything about him and I think I modelled myself after him a little bit. He was a solo artist and I loved the way he incorporated a band like The Attractions, it was a cool concept. I thought his whole vibe was so cool - this cool guy in the shades, kind of goofy looking and awkward, but it was all part of his aesthetic. "Red Shoes” is a great example of how he could write an instant classic, that song sounds like it’s been around forever. I really started getting into the cracks of songwriting when I heard it and it opened more technical doors for me as well. I’m definitely a fan, though, not just a scholarly fan. A lot of people I know don’t like him or don’t get it, and maybe that’s true in a grander, bigger scale - either you like him or you don’t. I love his voice and he’s a singer that I’ve tried to emulate a lot, even though I have no business doing that. He’s inspired me to write so many songs of my own and that’s helped to motivate me."

"I’m a fan of Ed Norton. He had quite an amazing double act this year with Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel. I remember I read the script of Birdman at one point and I thought it was brilliant, but then when I saw his performance… I mean, it’s wonderful when you’ve read something and when you then see the performance, you go, “There’s no way anyone else could have done that but Ed Norton.” I thought he was very, very good.What I love about Birdman is that most movies — when I see movies and television shows — dramatic things happen, and then people act dramatically, and sometimes you go, “Would you really do that?” Horrible things happen all our lives; we all experience loss and death and trauma. Usually, most people, I think, we just get on with it. We don’t have a whole soliloquy in the middle of something. [laughs] You just deal with life, right? But then when you see Birdman, one of the places where it actually works is in the theater, because people are so dramatic. That’s just the way it is. So it was very true in that movie. Of course, on a technical level, that movie was just insane."

"""I think I fell in love with this record when I first heard 'Personal Jesus', which was a big single in the US. I love the sound of this record. There's no band playing live, rocking out in a room; you can tell that they're sitting in front of their keyboards or drum machine and making the record one finger at a time. Yet somehow it's got this amazing soul, with a clean technical sound and the vocals are so powerful. It's one of those records for me. I used to always put it on in the car, particularly when it was raining and I had to drive somewhere and the window wipers were going back and forth. Till this day, whenever I put that record on, that’s what I can immediately think of: driving in the rain and listening to that record over and over again. I dunno if the rest of Garbage would necessarily put Violator on but we were playing it backstage at one of the shows the other night and Shirley was singing along. I think she said, ""I always forget how much I love these guys, they're a guilty pleasure of mine"". The same could be said about Duke and Steve too but I’m probably the biggest fan."

"Jean Pierre-Melville was the undisputed master of the French crime drama. Here he turns his gaze on the French Resistance during World War II (of which he himself was a member) in an entirely unsentimental, unflinching portrait. It not only de-romanticizes the movement with its rigorous and austere account of the day-to-day operations in this gray world, it also indicts it. For all the good the Resistance did, its members were only human: prone to betrayal and petty revenge. The movie is so specific in its regard of the loneliness and fear of these operatives, whose everyday lives alternate between boredom and peril. Unreleased in this country for thirty-seven years, the film was an absolute revelation to me when I saw it upon its release in 2006. Already a major fan of Melville’s crime films, I loved how this one both expands and distills his unique technical skills and his ability to tap into his characters’ emotional states. What emerges is something both complex in design and deeply personal. Casablanca it is not. Melville shows us the inner workings of something so intricate and important while also asking us whether the ends truly justify the means."