"I knew I wasn't going to fulfil the expectation of the sort of hip white boy collection of records," says Snout's softly spoken singer/songwriter/bassist Ross McLennan, a little self-conscious about publicly displaying his pile of all-time favourite records. "I'm not a rare 45s kinda guy."  

Besides being the owner of the smartest pair of side-burns in the business, with Snout's third album, Circle High and Wide, McLennan has arrived as one of the premier pop craftsmen Australia has to offer. Three absurdly digestible swing beat singles -  "Hey Hey Hey", "Circle High and Wide", "Got Sold on Heaven" - have already been lifted from the release, but listen to the entire album reveals Snout's songcraft drawing from sources further afield than an ostensible Fab Four fixation. In fact, just about all of McLennan's beloved albums can be heard, deftly submerged in most instances, within Circle High and Wide - whether it be the hiphop influence through vinyl scratching, a bass line borrowed from Bach, or some slippery wordplay learnt from an underrated old folkie.  

All time favourite album:   

The Beatles    The White Album    Capitol 1968

"It takes me back to a time when I was [on the] borderline of losing my mind and ironically reading a lot into songs, which are a history of rock and murder with that whole Manson thing. This album has so much chaos and random texture - it's such a beautiful thing. It's such a hotchpotch and in many ways it's a really bad album, but once your into it and you find your own way of understanding it, it's got so much. I guess I think of this one as my ‘desert island disc’. I can say that this is my favourite album of all time."

First record I ever bought:   

"Shazam"   The Shadows  Decca 1963

"There must have been a trash 'n' treasure for the Brownies or something, and a see-through red 45 of "Shazam" turned up. And me and my brother and sisters put it on just 'cause it looked good and then kept playing it and dancing to it for ages. So we decided to put together and buy it. I don't who it's by, I think it's on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack actually. it's this instrumental kinda like the Shadows [in fact, it is the Shadows], but it's got saxophone breaks and piano breaks."

What I'm into right now:   

	Ninetynine   767  Endearing 1998	"I really want to mention this record because it's fucking awesome. We've played with them a few times, but I don't know much about them. It's kind of multi-textural, they use vibes and glockenspiels and the old Casio calculator keyboards for percussion. I guess they are a texturally pleasing band to play with live because they don't sound anything like the other bands you play with - it's exotic pop music I guess."
	The Jam  Sound Affects  Polygram 1980	"When I was in secondary school I heard 'Start', I saw it on Sounds [The Donnie Sutherland music show] of all things, and loved it. Basically I was just waiting for a song a 'Taxman' bass line to come out so i could get into another band. Someone bought me Snap [a Jam compilation] the following Christmas and I had to force myself to get into it because I was a real strict Beatles-phile at that stage. Then years later I thought I would buy Sound Affects and it just ties in with a lot of memories of being a teenager."
	David Bowie  Another face  Decca 1981	"Do you mind if I hit you with a compilation? Most of this is early 'round about the mod era. It's got a lot of really weird-arse songs on it, and they're amazing. It's got songs like 'Rubber Band' and 'London Boys' on it. One of my favourite things on there is 'Please Mr Grave Digger', it's spoken-word with grave digging sounds and bells in the background. And 'The Laughing Gnome' is a great portrait of him just being a cockhead, someone wrote that it was his attempt at an early retirement."
	Jacques   Loussier  Jacques Loussier   Plays Bach  Telarc 1959/  Re-recorded 1993	"I don't think it's exactly the one my Mum had, but I found it in an op-shop a couple of months ago. It's an album I grew up with and it's basically swing/jazz interpretations of Bach. It's just fucking amazingly beautiful. I remember my music teacher at school used to hate it. He was a good guy, he just had this thing that was completely not credible. But I disagree completely. A lot of bass lines on the album we've just put out are completely influenced by the string-bass playing on this record. Beautiful lines, obviously a great composer."
	Donovan  Greatest Hits  Sony 1969	"This is probably the most relevant thing to Snout in a way, despite being more of a Beatles nut in terms of what I would like to be, essentially I'm a bit of a Donovan. He's just such a dag, but he has a really similar sort of jazz / folk / R&B sensibility that I connect to. And his use of phonetics is really close to my heart. He squeezes every drop out of the melody. With something like 'Wear You Love Like Heaven' he's basically singing a paint palette, extracting every syllables that are non-existent even. Adding extra vowels and making consonants harder than they possibly are in actual fact. That's something I found myself doing a lot, probably as a result of listening to Donovan."
	De La Soul   De La Soul is Dead  Tommy Boy 1991	"This is one fantastic album. I love it so much because it's got a great sense of humour and it's kind of sad in a way as well. Obviously the title implies it, but you really sense this sort of resigned humour. It's obviously all hindsight too, looking at the way things have gone in hiphop, how fucking hardcore and unyielding to softness it has all become. This is like the last gasp of humour in rap - or at least it feels like it to me."
	Jesus Christ  Superstar  Original London   Cast Recording  MCA 1970	"This is pretty pathetic, but I really love it. It reminds me of when I played in an 80-piece concert band [Ross played double bass], sitting in the thick of mostly brass instruments making all this sound - with a rock kick. It was such a racket, and putting on this record is a trip back into that for me. Irrespective of naiveté or crassness - when you get over all that sort of stuff it's just an amazing record. And some of the words are really funny too, I think tim Rice did a really good job on the lyrics."
	Diversion   A Slow River    Compilation   Slow River / White 1998	"This just ended up in my mail one day and it is fucking amazing. I'm not familiar with the bands on it, but I'm assuming they're all reasonably well known - in an indie sort of way - country performers. The songs are just mind blowing - all genre aside, this is the best collection of songs I've heard in a long time."