If you’ve been following my musical adventures you’ll know that my plans to release new songs gang aft agley: without a producer cracking a whip or a deadline to hit, Unquiet Mind records tend to take much longer than intended. But I hope they’re worth the wait, because David, Kenny and I put our hearts into everything we do – and at last, there’s some new music for you to listen to. Including the “nearly finished” song I talked about in Carrie Kills A Man back in 2022, Gallow Green.

The new record is called Don’t Know How To Human, and it was recorded and produced by me with lots of help from Luminous, who helped fix my mixes and took care of all the mastering. I’m enormously grateful for his help.

Don’t Know How to Human is a collection of 14 songs about witches, goths, non-binary people, mental health, #metoo and more. From the college rock of New Normal to the memento mori of Everything Ends it’s an album about trying to survive and even thrive in a world that feeds on outrage and anger. It’s a lot more fun than that sounds, I promise. And I think it’s more musically adventurous than our previous releases, although you’ll be glad to know that while I did try to rap on one of the songs I quickly realised what a bad idea that was.

We won’t be playing any gigs to promote this one but you may see me pop up from time to time with my guitar in hand: for example I’ll be playing one of these songs at the 404 Ink goodbye party at the Edinburgh Book Festival. That’s on the 22nd of August.