10. JandekI Knew You Would Leave

Jandek is a really fascinating artist. Notwithstanding his lyrics – there’s a great deal of depth, feeling and acuity there – the courage and the self-determination that he had to release these records had a great impact on me. They gave me confidence to be able to do what I did. It’s difficult to self-release records and believe in yourself sufficiently to send things out there and say, ‘hey, this is something that I’ve done’. So I took a great deal of inspiration from Jandek. Also, he’s not interested in playing ordinary guitar music, or singer-songwriter music. This music is far removed from that as you could possibly imagine. So that’s number one, having conviction in your idea and your ability. People criticise his music for being cacophonous, for being badly played, and for the guitar being ‘out of tune’, but I think it’s unique and incredibly compelling, and this song in particular is really powerful.