Peter Capaldi on the Glasgow sound behind his new album and his admiration for cousin Lewis

The forthcoming album is a beautifully understated slice of sophisticated pop music. It will be released by local record label Last Night From Glasgow - first single Bin Night debuted last month.

Although best known for his extensive career as an actor, Capaldi first became involved in music as a Glasgow School of Art student, when he fronted punk group The Dreamboys, part of the city’s eclectic 80s music scene. Four decades on, he released his debut solo album St Christopher in 2021.

“I’m not that guy who brings a guitar along to every party,” he told me at the time. Yet he has found his way back to exploring music again. The first album came about after an invitation from a friend, Robert Howard, the singer of The Blow Monkeys, to come along to a few recording sessions at his studio.

“Robert, who’s great and a wonderful musician, does this thing called the Monks Road Social, which is a conglomerate of musicians who put out an album every year, and they’re just happenings. I’d be encouraged to vaguely join in.” At one of these get-togethers Peter was asked if he had anything to record.

“I quickly put together a song, which they recorded in the space of a day, and it was so much fun. I thought: ‘Oh, I really want to do this again.’

“Over a period eight or nine months, I did that. I wrote stuff and sent it to Robert and we would ditch certain ones, and on then other ones he’d say: ‘Let’s hang onto that.’ ”

There’s a lot of Glasgow in Peter’s music: echoes of his hometown set against a canvas of Americana guitar and retro synths. “I kept going back to a Glaswegian art school ‘80s vibe,” Peter told me.

“The city itself, how it has such a power about it. Glasgow is a wonderful, noirish, synthy setting for things. Robert is very different and his musical experiences takes it in another direction occasionally, which is interesting.”

The American elements entered via Nashville trips while he was filming a movie nearby. “When I went there it felt like the spiritual home of any Glaswegian. You feel so at home, the music is elemental and we’ve been fed it already.

“The melodrama and the sadness and the darkness and the joy that’s very present in country music: the west of Scotland is a cauldron of that stuff and we reach for it all the time.

“There’s always a wish among Glaswegian musicians to mythologise the place in music and I think I’m trying to do that as well.”

He expanded on this theme, talking to the NME about the forthcoming second album he said: “When I was working with Craig [Ferguson] in The Dreamboys, it was in that punk sort of vibe, just having a go. Glasgow, at the time, was a very vibrant place. Well, it always is, musically. But you had a lot of great bands like Simple Minds, so it was a place where you could get gigs. You could go and play, even if you weren’t very good. And I think we were better than I thought, but I’m always very critical.”

Introducing Sweet Illusions, he gives it a specific Glasgow setting: “I’m always trying to discover for myself who I am, musically – without being too grand about it. You know, I am light-hearted about it, but I do take it seriously and try my best. The whole thing has quite a nostalgic feeling about it, but the nostalgia is probably for that period because I’m picking up where I left off. It’s a bit art studenty, Glasgow, 1978, rainy… but I’m plugging it with synthesisers and fat guitars.”

When asked of a possible collaboration with cousin Lewis Capaldi, Peter said: “I don’t know – I don’t really know Lewis. I think he’s fabulous. Before he was famous, I went to see him because I had discovered that he was doing stuff. And it was amazing. It wasn’t a big gig, but it was packed and everyone knew all the words to his songs. I was so proud of him. We met up afterward and he was just fabulous. So funny. And then he asked me to be in the video for ‘Someone You Loved’. I just look at him and go: ‘There’s so much talent there.’

“But the speed of [his ascent]… When I knew him, he was playing bars and stuff like that. And then within a year, he was at the Emmys. I mean, that’s a lot. But he’s brilliant, so he’ll be back. He’s the real thing. It’s in his heart and it’s in his soul and it’s in his songs. It’ll all come out in that, which is why he’s the real thing. His music is a natural expression of who he is.”