Roberta Flack - First Take
Someone made me a mixtape once of a lot of amazing folk and soul and jazz, kind of legendary songs, quite rare, and it had a lot of Pentangle and Fairport Convention and it had 'Compared To What' on it. And I went seeking 'Compared To What' because I thought "what is that song?", and that's what inspired the song 'Central Reservation'. It's just an amazing record.

Come the last six years, I was just like, "you know what, the sound of the next record is this record". One of the reasons is that I love the fact that the drums and bass are ever-present and yet, at the same time, they're almost not there. I can't explain it; it's like all of the elements of the record are perfectly heard but each sound has so much space around it. It's got the most extraordinary rhythm, emotion and beautiful songs. When I started speaking to Tucker Martine [Sugaring Season producer], who produced the album, I said "okay, here's a blueprint for a sound I love and a record that I love", and that was it. We weren't being analytical; it gave us a starting place, and from there it grew out. It's just filtered through in different ways.