It begins with a warm nostalgic crackle and what sounds like a long-lost Victrola recording by Coward or Formby, a tremulous ditty that trips along Tin Pan Alley style. Until you realise that that there's something darker and wryer going on here. And doesn't that voice sound familiar, the one asking plaintively
"How short the long and winding road, how long the cul-de-sac./Just like the Cross-Eyed Rambler, we've been this way before"

At which point it dawns on you. Old Red Eyes, as he used to be, is back.

When The Beautiful South, the joyous, sardonic, rambunctious and very Northern chroniclers of British life at the turn of the last century, called it a day in 2007 they left behind a rich legacy; a wall full of gold discs, ten studio albums crammed with acute observations, tenderness, vim and great tunes and a satisfied if rueful legion of fans. Their valedictory statement read "The Beautiful South have split due to musical similarities….the band would like to thank everyone for their 19 wonderful years in music"

There was irony here but also a nugget of truth. It was perhaps time to move on, to change things around, employ a soupcon of squad rotation and take the game to the opposition. There was, in true BS style, a boozy wake at a bowling alley with laughter, tears and karaoke. Remember them this way. But now, as the skittles clatter and the strains of My Way fade out, it's time to get back to work.

From the opening bars of I Do, a swaggering, electric riff without an ounce of fat on it, it's apparent that Paul Heaton has not settled for the musician's version of the carriage clock and the allotment. This is a man energised, liberated, unleashed. With new band, Steve Trafford, "French" Tom Chapman and Brian Edwards behind him, Paul Heaton is harder, rockier, louder than of yore. The sweet melodies are still there, the exquisite turns of phrase but this is is clearly a new and dynamic proposition.

"It is more rocking and a lot of that is down to the band. I don't know how deliberate it was, I don't recall drawing up a plan but it's just turned out that way. Everything was done very quickly, vocals often first or second take. There was no time-consuming deliberations really. We played a few warm-up dates and then  went straight into the studio really excited and eager. I think you can hear that."

The Cross-Eyed Rambler, an album full both of the familiar and the genuinely surprising, was largely written near Alkmaar in the Netherlands and recorded in Long Island, the studios in Acton rather than the borough of Manhattan. Aside from the deeply ironic God Bless Texas this is a record full of pithy, funny, rabble-rousing declarations and asides about the state of Heaton's native land. In The Pub, a whole social history is glimpsed through the changing fortunes of a homespun boozer. In A Good-Old Fashioned Town, Heaton bemoans how pride is often used as an excuse for bigotry and how people who begin their sentences "I'm not a racist but…" tend to be just that.
Most striking of all is the closing track Everything Is Everything, a bold and bilious state-of-the-nation epic.

"That started out as a poem I wrote for Bootsy Collins to deliver on one of Norman's (Cook AKA Fatboy Slim's) albums. It's a sort of grumpy old man's lament in a way but with more passion than that. About feeling strangled by the way the world is going."

In an industry where bands come and go like, as Heaton puts it, "those frogs and moles at the fairground game, where one pops up briefly and then it gets whacked on the head and disappears"
Heaton is no fly-by-night, flavour-of-the-month chancer. Back in the beleagured 1980s he gave hope and some nifty dance routines to a generation with the Housemartins. His new work has something of that "Fourth Best Band In Hull" about it; direct, passionate, engaged, bolshy, charming, tuneful. It's the best work that Heaton has done in years and you sense he knows it.

You'll have a chance to find out soon, both on record and when the band takes to the stage for what will hopefully be a balmy summer of gigs and festivals like Bestival, V and Latitude. Heaton's cross-eyed rambler may have "been this way before" but there is definitely a spring in his step this spring.

You can order the album HERE

You can watch the video for single "Mermaids And Slaves" HERE

The Cross Eyed Rambler website is HERE