Cover design and photograph by E. Buchanan

Woodstock says:

This album is a bit of an unplanned baby. It started with the demo of Beautiful Afternoon, and once I'd finished that I thought it would be rather fun to try out the same kind of thing with some old songs I'd never got around to recording, plus a couple I'd previously only done acoustically. And here they are.

My first attempt at self-producing - musically I've been messing about with midi, so it's a much more electronic sound than my previous stuff. However because many of the samples I used are gloriously shonky there are still plenty of rough edges. Some of the tracks also have acoustic instruments on them, and I've had a lot of fun getting more into vocal arrangements than I've had a chance to in the past. My history of singing in choirs coming back to haunt me, obviously. In addition, on several of the tracks I'm experimenting with what I would call "deep lounge" as an added ingredient to the mix. Make of that what you will.

All tracks were recorded in the plush surroundings of Fountainbridge Studios in the heart of historic central Edinburgh. In other words in my front room. Listen carefully and you might even hear the happy nocturnal strains of clubbers going on their merry way outside, or the plaintive sirens of the emergency services as they hurry to attend an early morning breach of the peace.

Wonderful Life is about the excuses we all make about how we haven't got one. During the glory days of the Edinburgh Songwriters' Showcase there was a guy called Alex The Poet who did a whole routine called "Songs You'll Never Hear On The Radio" about the most frequently played offerings of that era. This song was one of them. It has now been played on the radio, though I don't know if anyone actually heard it.

Watch The War was written in early 1999 on what would have been my parents' golden wedding anniversary if they'd been around to celebrate it. They married at Westminster Registry Office and then went for a drink with my aunt and three friends at the National Union of Students' bar in Endsleigh Street. Fifty years later I traipsed around Bloomsbury in unsuitable shoes and an airhostess costume (don't ask) looking for it for hours, thinking about war and television. Eventually I found a hotel on the corner, just about as far away from late 1940s communist idealism as you could get. I had a drink there and wrote down this song. Pity it's even more relevant now than it was then.

Birmingham is a travelogue with a twist. I really love the city of Birmingham. I've had the most amazing times there and I love how ready people down there are to party at the drop of a hat - and how good at it they are. I sometimes go there for my holidays. It's also the place where I experienced the first day of the rest of my life (the one I'm living now), so I guess I must have left the old me behind there. Say hi if you run into her.

Beautiful Afternoon came into existence just after three one Saturday earlier this year when I got to the bank too late to pay a cheque in and bounced a direct debit as a result. I walked home through Prince's Street Gardens, and the whole song was finished in my head by the time I got back. It's currently on the playlist at Radio Six International, so do tune in. It's cropped up with reassuring regularity all the times I've listened so far.

Daddy Was A Spaceman...maybe. Written in a van full of my worldly goods, somewhere in the wilds of the Scottish borders at about 4am after two days without sleep. I'd started hallucinating well-known London landmarks in the middle of the Lanarkshire fields by this time. Fortunately I wasn't driving. It's about my dad and something I think I remember, or maybe I imagined the whole thing.

Emotional at Airports is dedicated to my late father, who spent most of his working life based at Heathrow. It was one of the first songs I ever wrote, back in the late 1980s, and I was inspired to update it by the death of Concorde, which used to take off from just outside his office. After ten weeks on the playlist at Radio Six International, the full version of this track is now in the running for Record Of The Year 2004. If you feel inspired to help it along, click here to find out how. It's really easy.

New Day was composed in the middle of a field in Suffolk for Nicola Joseph, a fellow-traveller at the second Ray Davies songwriting workshop I attended. Unlike Spaceman, it's not rocket science to work out what this one's about.

One December Night is a Christmas song about the have-nots rather than the haves or about-to-haves. The acoustic version was played a lot last December.

Hole In My Head - standard "I don't 'arf know how to pick 'em" song. I really enjoyed singing this as it felt a bit like rock and roll.

Horoscope (The Wind Is On The Moon) is partly inspired by Eric Linklater's "The Wind On The Moon" and partly by how one's own birthday season often seems to shine a bit brighter in the calendar. It's a happy little ditty about free will and self-determination.