Rostam Batmanglij Quotes

I like The Smiths - I would love to do a song with The Smiths, because they are so sonically different.

Band of Skulls is joining Cage the Elephant as my new musical caffeine.

My friends actually used to call me the 'Female Conor Oberst.' I got to open up with him once, and I told him about that, and he thought it was hilarious.

I love bands like the Arctic Monkeys and The Smiths, and I'm working on my own music.

In everything I do, my principal inspiration is the 1996 Belle & Sebastian album 'If You're Feeling Sinister.'

I'm into Incubus. Growing up, I was a huge Taking Back Sunday fan. I'm still a fan, but I don't listen as much as I used to. When I was 13 or 14, I started getting into emo-pop-rock, so that influenced me. I also love Drake... I have a pretty diverse collection.

I started making music with my band in the '80s, so I am more product of post punk than classical music, and I have always carried on this way.

I grew up listening to Teenage Fanclub and Eugenius. Scottish music cast a huge influence on me.

I hope fans will go back and listen to the Beatles and the Beach Boys or Led Zeppelin, or put on 'Tommy' and let them experience like I did that moment when 'Pinball Wizard' comes on.

I usually get down with a little Violent Femmes in the summer. You know, 'Blister In The Sun.'

I absolutely think the Seattle grunge sound was instrumental to my music education.

The band Grizzly Bear, I think they're excellent. There's a beauty and a musicality there that I wish would have been in vogue in the late '80s, when I was forming bands.

When you're young you don't think, 'This person is going to change your life.' But when you start recording your own songs, it comes back and reminds you.

I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.

I kinda learned to sing singing to Echo and the Bunnymen songs and Smiths songs: Morrissey would be a big favorite.

I met Arcade Fire on their first record, 'Funeral.' I loved that record, and it was a record I was listening to while I wrote 'Where the Wild Things Are.' Those songs - especially 'Wake Up' and 'Neighbourhood' - there's a lot of that record that's about childhood.

R Stevie Moore was obviously a huge influence and is still a very big influence in my life.

It's just like music when you reckon it up. It's like listening to Pavement it's just The Fall in 1985, isn't it? They haven't got an original idea in their heads.

When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band - or at least in a Pixies cover band.

I still love 'The Cure' more than almost any other band. But they were really, truly like the first band that I really loved and felt was mine, you know. At a pivotal time in my life when I was 13, 14 years old.

My father smoked cigars his whole life, and my husband once in a while does. And when he does, it reminds me of my father. It's a heartwarming thing.

I directed my music to the teen-agers. I was 30 years old when I did 'Maybellene.' My school days had long been over when I did 'School Day,' but I was thinking of them.

I remember all the magic markers of the first time I heard the Stone Roses and that Madchester vibe, the Verve and all these groups coming up.

In college, I would follow Bob Dylan around, and I would show up to a concert, and he would sing some song he hadn't sang in a long time, and it would speak to something, and I would think it had some great fateful implication.

I've always been a huge Eric Church fan. I'll never forget being in college listening to his first album and how much it inspired to write my own music.