Mirroring the process by which he joined Modest Mouse in 2006, former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr has become a full-time member of The Cribs, after agreeing to work on a few songs for their forthcoming album.
Marr told BBC 6music: "It's totally inspiring as a guitar player because they're my favourite band that I've heard in a long time and I'm still a fan, you know. I think it's important to nurture that, and think like a fan, and it's not always easy to think like a fan - you have to really genuinely like band. When I got into The Cribs' second record, I was just really excited because they were a band that I could be a fan of, and I get to be in a band that I'm a real fan of, so that's fantastic just from a musical point of view".
He continued: "What we've done so far, people who've heard it say it sounds very much like The Smiths mashed with The Cribs and that's obviously quite an exciting prospect for some people but it's not really enough for us that. We want it to be the next version of The Cribs. One of the things I liked about the band before I even met them was that they sounded like achievers really, almost like over-achievers. I just heard one track and hoped that everything else was as good as that".
Bassist Gary Jarman added: "We want it to be more than the sum of its parts. The sum of its parts is The Cribs and The Smiths, it bares both genes, but you wanna be more than the sum of its parts. We're kinda putting this record to bed now, it's just the right time for this to finish I think. We're just getting started with Johnny so it's kinda frustrating, it's been like 20 months, which is a long time, and it's taken us far away".