Beaten this point to death but in 1993/1994 while recording Someday I'll Be Saturday Night Jon gave the engineer a copy of Soul Asylum's Runaway Train and said "Make it sound like that". Jon claims they stole Hearts of Stone for Never Say Goodbye.

I think Seb is dead on, they've been doing this for decades, it only became noticeable when they got older and the bands they were "inspired by" stayed the same age. You can't listen to an album like Bounce and then think Shanks is behind them wanting to sound younger, you just can't.