I’ve been meaning to sit down and write this for bloody ages. I should have done it the minute I touched down in Glasgow arriving home from New York at the beginning of July with my finished album on a hard drive in a cardboard box tucked under my arm.

The album is finished now. Well almost. It still has to be mastered which means making a decision on what tracks to maybe take off as it’s currently a bit too long. You may think this is a topic of conversation only for the anally retentive among us who have nothing better to do than speculate on the fine detail of the Perfect Album, but it is in fact a fairly accurate observation that any album over 45mins can start to lose the listener and deem the whole listening experience just a little less satisfactory. Or to put it bluntly, I’m a little nervous of boring everyone to tears so short and sweet it shall be.

New York was amazing. The Delgados played there regularly since 1996 but every time we were there we were playing a gig and so the nerves took hold a bit and I was never completely relaxed. I was certainly never there for a week solid which was the best bit about this trip.

I stayed in my producer’s apartment in Brooklyn and came into Manhattan every day on the subway. Coming from Glasgow, my impression of the scales involved here suggested that I would surely be on the subway for what, a couple of hours perhaps to get to Manhattan from Brooklyn? I exaggerate but the point is my impression of New York has always been that it’s so big and unruly that it would take days to get anywhere and I would never be able to go anywhere without a tour manager by my side. Such is the assumed disability of the sheltered band member who has rarely had to go anywhere completely alone whilst on tour. Of course, it took half an hour to cross the bridge (and what a bridge) and get into the air-conditioned bliss of the studio. And I could even do it on my own.

On the Wednesday morning of my stay it rained so hard I was frightened to go out so I sat lamely by the open window and got angry with myself for letting a shower come between me and a stroll around Central Park. So I just went out anyway and got drenched and strolled around the park in the rain. It was great though. One of those hours where everything, even rain, has a magical quality about it and as there was no-one else about, the walk took on a strange eerie atmosphere and felt oddly private.

The mix went really well and I’m really proud of it. Victor was great to work with and he had an idea to get another session guy in to work on guitars whilst I was over there. His name is Knox Chandler and he’s a session guitarist and cellist and is a great musician. He plays in Cyndi Lauper’s band and also played with Siouxsie and the Banshees for years. He’s arranged and played strings for R.E.M. and Depeche Mode as well as countless others. He came in for a couple of hours and played on some songs and totally transformed them for me. That is one of the really exciting things about doing a solo record – not really knowing who you might end up playing with on the record.