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Chapel Club - Spotify Playlist

These five shoe-gazers produce more of a broodingly intense atmosphere with their music than Gordon Brown managed to do as he visited the house of Gillian Duffy for tea and scones . Chapel Club's sound has the lyrical awareness of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, while also sharing a link to the likes of Echo And The Bunnymen,The Velvet Underground, or contemporaries including Interpol and White Lies.

What inspires these dark yet incredibly bright creations? Frontman Lewis Bowman talks us through a playlist taken straight from his MP3 player, ideal for morning walks in the woods. From an Apparat remix of Johnny Cash to an uplifting Beach Boys finalé, here is an insight into those Bowman looks to emulate and those who have helped shape the band's style.

Listen to Chapel Club's Playlist here

Johnny Cash - I Heard That Lonesome Whistle Blow (Apparat remix)

I guess it's a kind of madness that drives people to tinker with songs as incredible as this. In which case Apparat's madness must be of the pretty inspired sort, because this is wondrous: vast and moonswept as the plains and prairies in the lyric.

The Cure - All Cats Are Grey

A slow-burner, this creeps and sidles and slithers and sobs its way into your consciousness like the depression and despair by which it was inspired, all blurred and rough-edged and flickering in and out of definition. My tastes have been moving further away from clarity lately and this song's played a big part in the shift.

Portishead - The Rip

People have called Chapel Club a gloomy band, but I think that's too simple a reading. There's a difference between a wanton attraction to melancholy (which you might call gloomy) and simply being interested in the links between (post)modern life, human psychology and various forms of mental damage, upset and confusion (which you might call honest). When Portishead choose to explore the latter, they usually do it with real intelligence and elegance. And, as this track shows, with beauty to boot.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Down Boy

Blue, brutal and tender, this is a kind of bruise in musical form. It reminds me of a film I saw when I was a child, Little Nezha Fights the Dragon, an animation in which a Chinese prince is born from a flower and goes on to conquer an underwater kingdom of evil dragon lords. This is a very great compliment in my weird world.

Deerhunter - Game of Diamonds

I'm in love with this band, everything they do makes my mouth water. In my head they're akin to Yo La Tengo: musically playful, conceptually generous and artfully American. Masters of their own wasted, wistful modern musical idiom? Er, yeah.

Jacques Brel - Je Ne Sais Pas

What can I say about Brel to make people understand what he means to me? I'm a tenth the writer I'd need to be to articulate it half as well as I ought. Some voices you hear and within a few moments you know that they were meant for you, that they were speaking directly to you and only to you no matter how long ago they lived and died or how many others have listened and loved before you. Brel is such a voice to me. That's the best I can do for now.

Washington Phillips - What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?

Just perfect, perfect music. Melodically and lyrically tender, innocent, compassionate, beautifully recorded, strung all about with the celestial sparkles of Phillips' dolceola... If there were a benevolent god, this would be all the church he would require.

Yo La Tengo - Green Arrow

This is a masterclass in songwriting. No vocals or lyrics: just melody, rhythm, tons of restraint and a commitment to let the musical moment grow and flourish and fade in its own proper time. It could soundtrack anything important in life, from the birth of your firstborn to the death of your oldest friend, and it would make complete emotional sense every time. Sublime.

Little Joy - Evaporar

The best Strokes spin-off project for me, Little Joy's debut was one of my favourite records of whatever year it was when it was released. And this song, the last on the album, is a delicate, laidback little acoustic number with hints of Brazilian samba and a beautifully burred Portuguese language vocal from the dude in Los Hermanos. I'm a sucker for anything sung in a Romance language. Music for the close of day.

Air - Biological

This song is from Talkie Walkie, which I listen to about five times a week. I'm obsessed with the whole record, but this has been the main track for me lately: it's one of the few songs I can think of that doesn't sound quite like anything else. It's so self-consciously crisp and precise and synthetic, yet it retains an emotional intimacy many full-blooded acoustic singer-songwriters would kill for.

The Flaming Lips - Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell

I love how delicate Wayne Coyne's voice sounds, as though some giant demon has him pinned against a wall by his throat and he's trying to charm his way out of trouble. I guess when you think about it, it's possible that that is the idea behind a Flaming Lips track or two. Which is not to be flippant about the band's talent: they do trippy so good I get giddy thinking about it.

Arthur Russell - That's Us/Wild Combination

A great city song, even for someone endlessly awaiting the chance to pursue a hazy, quasi-agrarian ideal (i.e. me). Russell is one of the true genii of modern music, a nightclub Frank O'Hara painting without paint.

The Beach Boys - Disney Girls (1957)

Because this playlist was taken directly from my mp3 player, where it was assembled to accompany early morning walks in the woods with my dog, it's quite a down-tempo, thoughtful affair. But just as I like my walks to end on a brighter note, I now want Q readers to feel upbeat as our little journey draws to a close. And what song is more soothing, sweet and breezily beautiful than this? Everything everyone loves about The Beach Boys is here: Pacific coast nostalgia, a lilting melody, delicate sonic ornamentation, the cooing and sighing of some of the most silky-throated bastards ever to wax lyrical... Pretty blissful, all told. The lush sun-up to Cash/Apparat's pre-dawn dark. Enjoy your day.

6:20 AM | 17/11/2010