Album: Edwyn Collins

Home Again

Having recorded Home Again by spring 2005, Edwyn Collins then faced a battle recovering from the stroke that almost took his life before he could finish it. It sounds like he was already suffering something of a mid-life crisis; several songs are haunted by dissatisfaction. In "Liberteenage Rag" , he refers to wanting to change his life like a snake shedding its skin, while the title track finds him in melancholy, reflective mood: "I started searching for my soul again, but there was nothing I could find."

The disillusion extends to the romantic failure of "One Is a Lonely Number", albeit with Collins concluding that "if desire breaks your heart, you needn't fall apart". Elsewhere, arrogant celebs are chided in the enjoyable folk-blues "Superstar Talking Blues", and whales hymned in the epiphanic nu-folk number "Leviathan", both illustrating the rootsy pop modes favoured on Home Again, which range from the whiskery slide-guitar blues "7th Son" and Memphis soul shuffle "You'll Never Know" to the deft collusion of banjo and drum machine on "One Is a Lonely Number".

Download this: 'You'll Never Know', 'Superstar Talking Blues'