Most influential albums

1. Wilco — ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’. Beautifully understated songs with brilliant production and almost structured like a concept album. While no particular song is a favourite, the album in itself changed my ideas on structuring songs. I literally created a flow chart based on my thoughts from this album, which I now use to compare my songs to and fill in the weak points based on the chart.

2. Tom Waits — ‘Rain Dogs’. As someone with distinct left-of-centre music tastes, discovering Tom Waits made me realise how completely dissatisfied I was with mainstream music. I was very affected by the broad tonal pallet and instrumentation choices of this album, and have since stopped relying on traditional band sounds.

3. Radiohead — ‘OK Computer’. This was, of course, hugely influential across the world and I was one of its converts. After hearing this album (late, not until 2005 really), I decided that it wasn't enough to just write a catchy ditty and I wanted to create more significant bodies of work.

4. Kate Bush — ‘Hounds Of Love’. I was very influenced by the subtle complexity of this album and its distinctive quirkiness, despite which it still topped the pop charts. The songs are amazing pop songs but there is so much going on with the production.

5. Counting Crows — ‘August And Everything After’. Perhaps not a groundbreaking album for the music scene at large, but it certainly sparked a teenage passion in me for music and songwriting. This was the first album I bought when I was a kid growing up on a farm in (very) rural Queensland, and basically the turning point at which as a teenager I started chasing my own musical and creative ideas outside of school and family influences.

Ben Stewart performs alongside Kingswood and Blonde On Blonde at The Exchange Hotel Sun Jan 27.