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James are soon to embark on a nationwide tour (which rolls into Newcastle on May 17), having just released 14th studio album ‘Girl at the End of the World’. I spoke to bass guitarist Jim Glennie about the album, the tour and life at the heart of one of the U.K’s most enduring bands.

It’s been 34 years since Jim Glennie formed James, the band which took his name. After as many spats, break up’s and comebacks as you would expect of a band of such vintage, James are back and sounding as good as ever. The new album certainly has Jim in buoyant mood. ‘I think it’s a great record, I’m really proud of it, it sort of picks up where ‘La Petit Mort’ left off. It’s almost like what we learned from the previous album, we’ve used that as the start point with this record.’

There is certainly a feel good vibe about the album which sees the band reaffirm their dancefloor roots. Produced by Max Dingel, Jim tells me that Brian Eno was also involved. ‘We took him a couple of songs, one was the single ‘Nothing But Love’, we knew we’d written a great song but we thought ‘there is something missing’, so we asked Brian what he would suggest, and he put keyboards on it, sort of arpeggiated keyboards which have become a real key feature of it, even though it is a little bit alien to the rest of the song, but in total Eno style, it just works brilliantly.”

The band have had hit albums before of course, but perhaps are often seen as a ‘great singles band’ or a ‘great live act’ which has rather unfairly left albums such as ‘Laid’ or ‘Millionaires’ overlooked, even though they more than hold their own with any records from their era. It’s an assessment Jim agrees with: “I think that has happened, perhaps some of the records have slipped a little bit under the radar, but it feels a little bit different with this one, there seems to be a little bit of a new buzz about us, which is bonkers fourteen albums in.” And in terms of those previous releases which may not have hit commercial or critical heights, he is philosophical “It’s just part and parcel of the industry we are in, sometimes you feel you’ve released a great song or album and it doesn’t seem to engage for whatever reason, but it’s still there in the annals of music history, and at some point in the future, long after we’re all gone, some kid somewhere will bump into it, and think ‘wow this is wonderful’, so it’s there forever more”

James are somewhat notorious for not just ‘bumping into’ their older songs, but rather kicking them into the long grass, as Jim explains when I ask him about the setlist for the forthcoming tour. “Obviously we’ve got bloody millions of songs to choose from, so we tend to change things around every night. We’re not a band that will go out there and play songs we don’t want to play, and quite selfishly we go out and play the songs we want to do, and I guess that’s why we’re still here after all these years. We’ll happily do a tour without playing ‘Sit Down’ or ‘Laid’ but we have a pretty big portfolio to choose from. We are kind of (currently) debating the pool of songs that we are going to choose from for the tour, it’s often nice to surprise people with things from 15 or 20 years ago that they wouldn’t expect to hear.”

I ask about the tour and the relationships within the band, Jim has had a fractious relationship with lead singer Tim Booth over the years, and I wonder if the confines of a tour put an extra strain on that. “We’ve reached an age now where you can demand your own space a little bit, and you can go off on your own for a little while. It’s like a family, you fall out, you make up, it’s just gonna happen. We’ve matured now though, gone are the days of big rows and punch ups!”

The Newcastle gig is one that Jim is looking forward to in particular. “My wife is from Consett, so I’ve spent a lot of time up in the North East, I love it up there. When I was courting my wife, she was living on Westgate Rd (Newcastle) and I’d go up there every weekend, I really loved it and I think the people are amazing. We’ve had some great gigs up there, we’ve always had a really loyal fanbase, real heartfelt passion.”

It’s a relationship that looks set to continue as well as Jim tells me that the band are committed, contractually, to at least two further albums. “It’s never felt like a long career stretching out ahead of us and it still doesn’t. We take each album as a blessing. It feels like it’s in the lap of the gods but as long as we are enjoying it, long may it last.”

Here’s hoping it does.

James are back releasing their 14th album, Girl at the End of the World, a record that the band considers as their best ever. I had the privilege to interview Saul Davies, the violinist and guitarist for James. It was a relaxed and laid back conversation, at one point even the local plumber joined us, we talked about the band, the new album and their upcoming tour.

I was first introduced to James in 2014 when spontaneously attending the not so well known festival, Umbria Rocks. I saw the band perform in field filled with a grand total of around 150 people, my memory is of Tim exclaiming, “Wow, what a big field!” Despite the lack of numbers, James created a magical atmosphere providing more than just music. From this one experience, I bought all their albums and became aware of just how huge the band are. They’ve performed at every festival, Glastonbury, Woodstock 2, Coachella and have played with big names such as The Stone Roses, Radiohead and The Killers. They’re critically acclaimed and commercially successful having sold over 12 million albums worldwide.

James formed in 1982, emerging at the tail end of the 80s, they survived through the scenes of Madchester, Britpop and remain current today whilst others have faded into oblivion. I was intrigued as to how the band have kept going, when asking Saul what their secret is to, he gave the simple reply; “we just keep writing and keep making records.”

“If a band continues to make music and find itself creatively viable there is a chance people can enjoy what you’re doing. As soon as a band stops writing automatically you become like a little of a tribute band to yourself and I think that artistically it is not credible and difficult to maintain a credibility.”

James have had a long and illustrious career, I wanted to know if there was an album which Saul was particularly proud of, a question he found difficult to answer, having a mixture of responses;

“I think the last record we made prior to breaking in 2001, Pleased to Meet You is a great record. I’m very proud of La Petite Mort, I think it’s a lovely record. This record Girl at the End of the World I think is like a progression on La Petite Mort and kind of accompanies it. These last two records I do feel very strongly about.”

Saul had mentioned the band’s break in 2001, James had a hiatus from 2001 till 2007. It seemed for Saul during these years things “calmed down a little bit”, a time in which he married and had children. He stressed the fact that the break in 2001 was meant to be a permanent fixture with “absolutely no inclination to get back together again, it was something that wasn’t on the cards.”

At this moment in the interview Saul had a knock on the door from his plumber thus we had to quickly postpone our conversation.

Crisis averted, we returned to the interview and I asked what got the band back together in 2007;

“A desire to write more music again, we had some years apart…then we wondered what it would be like if we wrote something together and when we started writing it was apparent that we were writing some half decent material and one thing led to another…suddenly we were out on tour supporting an album that we’d made.”

We then went on to talk about the upcoming album Girl at the End of the World, I wanted to know what we were to expect from the album after hearing two pre-released singles, Nothing But Love and To My Surprise. These songs are filled with techno dance beats, which Saul described as “not that representative of the album.” His description of the album made it sound like it is filled with electronic, rock, club epic, “German sounding thing…big dance thing…mad keyboard flying thing,” so we were to expect a variety of things…

“I don’t think there is one particular theme that runs through it all…It’s difficult to categorise, there’s one song called Alvin which is in French for Christs sake, Tim decided to sing in French which is funny because his French accent is dreadful.”

James’ previous album La Petite Mort did extremely well with a hectic year of live shows, it seemed it would be a difficult one to follow. Saul however seemed confident in saying “Anybody who likes the last record looks like they’re probably really going to enjoy this one as well” and explained how many said Girl At the End of the World is actually better.

This May the band are endeavouring on what is said to be their biggest tour to date, playing to 60,000 fans across 15 shows. I asked what fans should expect from the two and a quarter hour set, “it has to be long because we’ve got a lot of songs.”

“Night by night it will change. We’re not a band who want to do the same set every night…we’ll play seven or eight new songs, we’ll play some old catalogue material…we’ll still play two or three songs from the last album, we love playing songs from that record.”

Many have named the sold out Manchester show as the sure highlight, I wondered if the band regarded Manchester as the best night being where they originated. I seemed to have hit a nerve as Saul insisted this wasn’t the case and each show was special in its own way;

“We must make our shows as special as we can everywhere we go for those people making the effort to even get to that show …I’m not paying lip service to this, it really is the case and I think we put a lot into our shows, they’re quite emotional…we’re doing something, we’re a band but we see ourselves as artists, it’s an enterprise, not just about business, it’s about making music.”

Saul then came down from his inspirational speech and went back to the subject of Manchester;

“Of course its special in Manchester because one way another that’s where the band is from and that’s where our heritage is so yeah it is special, we would be a different band if were from somewhere else, it has defined who we are.”

After talking for half an hour it was time to go…the questions were answered, the septic tank was fixed, the interview was over. Thanks Saul.

Girl at the End of the World is released 18th March alongside a major headline UK tour in May, the band will also be appearing in stores across the country in March for album signings.

The music world is a harsh climate. Its inhabitants, though a hardy breed, face the cold, bracing weather of public opinion and struggle to find sustenance and success in the saturated soil of modern rock. For bands who’ve been around for a while, all it takes is a change in the wind for them to grow tired and lifeless. James is a survivor. Formed in 1982, its members have put out album after album, and after a brief death when vocalist Tim Booth left in 2001, they rose again to fight for life in 2006, and have since gone on slam out three more albums.

Jim Glennie, the bassist and apparent namesake of the band, makes it clear that James had been his job for almost his whole life, and the albums they’ve made follow a path of progression. “You become different people – I’m not the 15-year-old boy I was anymore, I’m a fifty-year-old bloke with kids and grandchildren! Those albums reflect those massive changes, from this spindly sparseness on Stripmine to the more experimental period to the anthemic period where we had some success, then disappearing off to the States. I think that had a big influence on us.

“I never felt like we were gonna be in it for a long time – it wasn’t something that existed beyond the record we were working on. It never felt any more concrete than that. We’re still excited by what we do and we’re still finding new ways to present our music to people. Since we got back together in 2006, we felt like we were kind of under the radar, but after La Petite Mort [the band’s 13th full-length release] something shifted and a lot of people heard us for the first time. So, you kind of circumvent the industry, when you play a gig and there are loads of young people there – people get into you each time you do something, and that’s really exciting.”

This, in a way, is the real strength of James as a band. They have managed to hit their stride creatively in a career spanning 30 years and still boast a sizeable fan base to support them. Over time, their sound has morphed and won them supporters in many places. Brian Eno, the pioneer of ambience, is one such fan, and was involved in the production of a number of James’s albums mid-career such as Laid, Wah Wah and Millionaires. He is often credited with inflicting his ambient tendencies onto the band, and I wondered what influence current producer Max Dingel, an apparent Pro-Tools master and sonic perfectionist, had over the recent albums. “I think La Petite Mort was kind of a shift sonically for us and that was implemented by Max. We wanted to push things a little bit, and Max was the perfect person. He concentrates massively on the sounds – it’s about crafting the sounds and creating space for them. I think he’s given us the kind of grit and the power that we get live, but the difference is in the way he crafts the songs. Some of us weren’t so sure about the process, but I think the success of La Petite Mort has validated it. And also we love it, we kind of grew into it, so it seemed like a no-brainer to do another one with Max to kind of pick up where we left off.”

Their new album Girl at the End of the World, out on 18 March, promises to be as intricate as their previous release, La Petite Mort. Having been written entirely in Scotland, the solitude seems to be the only thing that carried through: “I don’t think Scotland specifically had an effect on the songwriting, it was more that we were locked away in the middle of nowhere in the Highlands in January, minus ten outside, and that could have been anywhere – Alaska, Newfoundland, Scandinavia, anywhere freezing would’ve had a similar effect on the album. It was something we needed to do, we locked ourselves away and spent all day writing, and that became the core of the album.”

In terms of tracks, ‘Girl at the End of the World’ promises a mix of straight-up pop songs and some structurally looser ones. “I love the big journey songs. I love the tension – the ones that don’t just go verse-chorus-verse-chorus, but the ones that go part-A-part-B-part-C-part-D, and I’m really looking forward to playing them live. ‘Girl at the End of the World’, it’s just a simple little pop song – I only join in on the chorus, but I love the directness of it.”

On the subject of live activities, Tim Booth’s serpentine swerving and seductive stage presence are renowned, and I ask whether the band has anything special in store for the upcoming UK tour. “We’re a bit shambolic when it comes to organising things. We tend to have a lot of ideas last minute that we try and implement and then cobble things together into a show. It’s going to be a lot of this new album obviously, we’re desperate to play it to people. I think we’re going to shift around some of the tunes we play and work on some back catalogue things, but we’ve got so bloody many to pick from!”

Although James has never quite dominated the musical landscape they reside in, as some bands do, they have maintained an impressively consistent trajectory on the path of British rock. They are career musicians – long-distance runners that make the music they love making, humbly and wholeheartedly. Girl at the End of the World hopes to be as big-hearted as the rest of their catalogue, and with refined production and a wealth of experience to draw from, it should build well on top of the success of La Petite Mort. They have survived for this long. Thankfully, it doesn’t look like they’ll be giving up the gun anytime soon.

Tim Booth on his fury at musical ageism, his love affair with Brian Eno and the spooky ways his lyrics come true.

Band at the end of the world James and Tim Booth (centre) look suitably delighted with their new album.

“People think ‘Surely James were biggest around Sit Down in the 90s?’ Well, we’re bigger now.”

If James singer Tim Booth’s claim seems unlikely at first, then their new album Girl At The End Of The World has just matched the No 2 peak of three of their past albums (90s discs Gold Mother, Seven and Millionaires.)

The self-confessed “awkward Mancunian band who never fitted anyone’s pigeonhole” are also set to play to 150,000 people on their marathon tour in May – more than any other tour in James history. They then open the main Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury on June 24.

“We aren’t fully appreciated, because the media goes with cool”

So it’s no wonder that Booth has plenty of anger at the fact that James have been in the margins ever since their debut album Stutter 30 years ago, back when Morrissey was pretty much their only mainstream fan.

“We still feel outsiders,” spits Booth. “There’s a large part of the cultural media that only looks at music made by people younger than 28. We don’t like that. We don’t like sexism or racism and we don’t like ageism either.

“We know that if a young band had made our new single Nothing But Love that it’d be a smash hit. But because of the way the media is set up, it’s virtually impossible for us to have hits now, unless a miracle happens.

“We aren’t fully appreciated and we aren’t seen for what we are, because the media goes with cool – bands who are less vulnerable and more obvious.”

And it’s true that James have always been unfashionable. Even when they had hits like Laid, She’s A Star and the all-conquering Sit Down they certainly didn’t belong to rave, grunge or Britpop.

But it’s that outsider spirit that drives the band on, determined to prove doubters wrong. “We’re bitter we aren’t appreciated sometimes,” admits the shaven-headed frontman. “But that bitterness drives us, makes us go ‘Well, we’ll just have to make even better fucking music.’ It’s an inspiration!

“And it’s working for us. We aren’t very cool, we don’t play the game, we sometimes won’t play our big hits for a year in concert. But James have made it through for 35 years. Our heritage says we have to take risks, and that’s why we’ve survived.”

“Brian Eno turned down millions to work with bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers and REM to work with us for a pittance”
If Booth’s words look angry in print, he says them with a smile. He may not be a typical bloke, but he can’t half swear for a Buddhist. Brought up in Bradford before he met his bandmates at Manchester Uni, he’s also a Leeds fan, which must be fun in an eight-piece Manc band.

And Booth is right about James taking risks. Fourteen albums in, and Girl At The End Of The World essentially sees James discover rave music. It starts with two minutes of pounding keyboards before Bitch’s self-mocking vocals kick in.

Like previous album La Petite Mort, the new record was written in the Scottish highlands. “It was three weeks of no internet and hardly any phone signal,” recalls Booth, 56. “It was isolated and lonely. It’s the band basically speaking in tongues, a completely made-up language that only we understand. The only respite was to take myself off to go hiking up a mountain in the sleet and snow.”

Booth talks excitedly about setting the band’s drum machine on a fast tempo in order to encourage its fast pace (“I’ve danced in James for years, but we don’t always give ourselves the best music to dance to”) and off the throbbing Attention began as a ballad before “some people in the band speeded it up to a mega-fast, comedy Pinky & Perky speed”.

But he later admits that Girl At The End Of The World was “the hardest record we’ve ever had to make”. He’s reluctant to expand further, explaining: “The turmoil is how bands like Oasis sell themselves. But we protect ourselves in James and close the wagon train.”

However, Booth may well be referring to guitarist Larry Gott, who is on sabbatical after not joining James’ tour in 2015. Is Gott still a member of James? “I think you’d have to ask him that,” says Booth tersely.

Booth is much happier talking about how Brian Eno helped them on the new album. Although produced by The Killers associate Max Dingel, Girl At The End Of The World’s recording saw Eno join James in the studio for the first time since 2001’s Pleased To Meet You.

“Brian says it quietly, but he does say that James are his favourite band,” grins Booth. “So many bands have come up to me going ‘How do you get to work with Brian Eno so much? We’ve been trying for years!’ And these are big bands like REM and Red Hot Chili Peppers who would make Brian millions, that he’s turned down to work with us for a pittance.”

Influential U2, Talking Heads and Coldplay producer Eno has “the best mind I’ve ever encountered,” according to Booth. “There’s no such thing as a problem to Brian, only exciting ideas that need to be looked at. He’s so positive and playful.

“Sometimes, sure, we’ll go on a dead end with Brian for hours, but then he’ll just go ‘Nope, didn’t work, let’s turn around and go this way.’ I feel so happy to see him every time and it’s still a love affair with Brian.”

Booth also admires Regina Spektor, saying he was unable to write a song for three months after he first saw the New Yorker in concert. “When I’m hit by music, I’m really hit by it,” he enthuses, adding he “wept and shook” the first time he saw Sufjan Stevens play, deadpanning: “He was even better the second time.”

But Booth admits he’s not completely immune to writing off ageing musicians himself. “When I saw The Rolling Stones, they were awful, a pantomime,” he sighs. “Most people get stuck and become parodies of themselves when they get old. It’s the same as before, but not as good. But it’s not about age, it’s about being alive. Leonard Cohen, Abdul Ibrahim, you still go ‘Holy cow!’ at them.”

So how do James avoid becoming a parody? “Because we make songs from the subconscious. It’s five songwriters moving all at once, and we don’t control it. We’re less predictable because none of us know where we’re going.”

It’s at this point where Loaded’s interview with Booth takes a turn for the sinister. We’ve spoken to plenty of singers who say their lyrics were trying to tell them something about their lives, but none have been able to demonstrate it quite so precisely as Booth.

He explains how Blue Pastures from James’ 1997 album Whiplash was about a man committing suicide in the Lake District by laying down in the snow and refusing to get up. Before the song was released, it’s exactly what a friend of Booth’s then-girlfriend did. The song was played at his funeral and his widow phoned Booth, asking how he knew her husband was going to kill himself.

“I don’t sit down to write songs about an event,” he states. “I’m fishing around and I believe the unconscious has access to the past and to the future. They’re all the same to the unconscious, so a lot of my songs tend to come true.”

Which, yes, does sound a bit like mystic bobbins. But it’s hard to deny Booth is onto something when he describes new song Attention. Booth lives in Topanga in the Californian desert with his wife Katie and their 11-year-old son Luka.

Attention was written when the family moved north in California to the affluent Berkeley suburb, but they moved back to Topanga eight months later, largely because their son was unable to settle in Berkeley.

“I’d written this song with a chorus mentioning a manzanita tree,” recalls Booth. “I thought to myself ‘What the fuck? No-one in England will know what a manzanita tree is. It’s a shitty chorus reference.’” Booth tried to write alternative lyrics “20 times”, but kept coming back to the same lines. They described a couple sitting around a manzanita tree watching shooting stars by a fire and “By this fire we are shaped”.

Shortly after Booth’s family moved back to Topanga, the father of twin classmates of Luka died suddenly.

“We know how we touch people’s lives, because they frequently tell us”

The children at the school requested they hold a Native American death ceremony in honour of the twins’ father… where families gathered around a manzanita tree by a fire, watching shooting stars. “You give offerings to the fire,” says Booth. “The twins slept by the fire with their mother, and it’s the most profound acknowledgement of death I’ve ever experienced.”

Told you Booth wasn’t a regular bloke. But he’s one it’s impossible not to warm to, and whether or not James play the hits on that May tour, 150,000 people will go home happy.

“We know what we’re capable of,” summaries Booth. “We know how good we can be live, though some shows fail and we fall.

“But we know how we touch people’s lives, because they frequently tell us. We do what we’re most passionate about and have people thank us for it all the time. That’s an amazing position to be in.”

Boasting a run of UK chart singles and an American college radio hit in ‘Laid’, James enjoyed phenomenal success in the 1990s, establishing themselves as a prominent fixture of the Manchester indie scene whilst avoiding the Britpop tag.

The band split in 2001 following the departure of singer Tim Booth but burst back into life six years later – and the seven-piece have been prolific ever since, with a number of tours and new studio albums.

Daniel Jeakins spoke to founding member and band namesake Jim ‘James’ Glennie ahead of the release of their latest record Girl At The End of the World to talk crowning career moments, a new three-album deal and their reformation.

Hi Jim. You’re in the process of promoting your latest record Girl At The End of the World. How’s it all going?

“Really well, thank you. We’ve got a really busy schedule lined up – we’re doing lots of in-store performances, BBC Breakfast and things like that. Personally I’ve been really pleased with the reaction we’ve got from the new material – we really enjoy the challenge of bringing new songs to our audience and not just playing the same old songs. We’ve always wanted to be an active band in that sense.”

Your last record, La Petite Mort, was labelled as being about the death of (singer) Tim Booth’s mother. Does this latest album have a similarly specific subject.

“Not really no, this album isn’t about anything in particular. Obviously there are certain songs you can point to which are about things Tim has experienced recently.”

You’ve been extremely prolific since you reformed – you’ve toured pretty much non-stop and this will be your fifth album since 2008. Obviously the hunger hasn’t died?

“We’ve always been a band that want to constantly update our sound. It might be hard to believe, but ever since the beginning it’s kind of felt like every album could potentially be the last one. We’ve never had any assurances that we’d be able to carry on – actually now is the first time we’ve really had that assurance.

“Our new label (BMG) have given us a three album deal, with this being the first one, so we’ve got plans to release more going forward.”

You’re the only member of James who has been a part of the band for its whole duration – what would you say are the highlights of your career?

“I could reel off things we’ve achieved and amazing things I’ve done, but it’s the small personal things that really stick in the memory. Growing up I was a huge fan of The Jam and I remember seeing their name written above the Apollo and thinking ‘I wonder if my band will ever get to play there’. Then years later we headlined the Apollo and our name was written in the exact same letters – sentimental stuff like that is what really sticks out to me.”

You’re known for playing very different sets every night and not sticking to the same selection of songs – why did you decide to vary your performances?

“I think it’s important to play a set that suits your setting. I remember we had a flight delayed when we were due to play Latitude so we ended up playing the day after in one of the tents at 11:30am. With that kind of set you have to respect that everyone’s a bit hungover, so we played a lot of quite intimate ones.

“If you’re on late afternoon when everyone starts drinking again you bring out the big anthems. Most bands like to rehearse a specific set list, which is a lot easier for our lighting and sound guys, but we like doing it that way. It does lead to a lot of arguments before the gig when it comes to choosing what songs we play though!”

Tim Booth believes the James’ younger fanbase is helping the band top the charts.

The rock group are on course to knock Grammy Award-winner Adele from the Number One top spot on the Official UK Album Chart with their 14th album ‘Girl At The End Of The World’ and frontman Tim Booth believes he has the younger generation of fans to thank for its recent success.

In an interview with NME magazine, he said: ”It [2014’s ‘La Petite Mort’] reached a lot of people, especially the videos. We were noticing a younger audience coming to our gigs, so I think the last one set up this one [‘Nothing But Love]. We know we’ve made a pretty magical record and we believe the record will stand up to the scrutiny so it feels great.

”There aren’t many people who can break through the glass ceiling of age and it looks like we’re gonna be one of them.”

But when it comes to knocking Adele off the top spot, Tim isn’t convinced the group will be able to up against a ”force” like the ‘Hello’ hitmaker.

He explained: ”We’re very happy with how things are going. We think the force of nature that is Adele will push us out of the way at the last moment. James is like a little cottage industry compared to a corporation and I can’t see us holding onto that Number One spot by the end of the week.

”We’re going to do our best obviously and we’ll be very happy with Number Two or Three or whatever we end up with. It’s just really nice that it’s surprised a lot of people.

”We improvise songs, we can’t write hits, we have not a clue how to do that and we aren’t interested in that, but every so often a big song just turns up. It’s like you’re fishing for trout and you suddenly catch a massive great pike by complete error. We knew we’d caught something quite big with ‘Nothing But Love’. We’ve got another one called ‘Dear John’ which is gonna make people be quite surprised too, because it doesn’t sound like a James song in some ways. I’m looking forward to that one coming out.”

TIM BOOTH, 56, is the lead singer of the band James whose biggest hit was Sit Down in 1991.

PATTI SMITH: Horses (Sony)

I heard this at boarding school after I was told that my dad had gone into hospital. I was devastated and couldn’t sleep. I hadn’t played it before and the song Birdland is about a boy losing his father. At that moment I connected to music in a way that I’d never done before.

WIRE: Pink Flag (EMI)

An overlooked punk classic. I interviewed them when I was 17 by pretending to be a journalist from the school magazine and watched them perform these songs. It’s one of the most inventive, crazy records ever.

PIXIES: Doolittle (4AD)

The Pixies were way ahead of their time and influenced the grunge movement. The arrangements are well crafted and singer Black Francis is the king of scream. They invited us to their Brixton show and it was one of the greatest gigs I’ve seen.

SUFJAN STEVENS: Carrie & Lowell (Asthmatic Kitty)

Magnificent. It’s very folky and partly about the death of his alcoholic, schizophrenic mother. It’s a great record to chill out and it’s so vulnerable. I saw him live last year and it’s so hard to hold an audience with stillness but he did it.

REGINA SPEKTOR: Soviet Kitsch (Sire)

She’s a classically trained pianist and can do musical things that I can’t dream of. The song Us is written from the point of view of statues of Soviet dictators and sounds like it has come from a musical. Her voice can make you weep but there’s lots of humour.

BRIAN ENO: Discreet Music (EMI)

I’ve lived with this record for 35 years. It never ceases to hold me. It’s one of Eno’s early ambient records and got torn apart by the press because everyone was into vocals at the time. I use it to relax.