The man suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and yet he still comes bouncing back with the goods. Not even a 15 year hiatus stuck in the chart wilderness stopped former Orange Juice leader, Collins following up his ’82 hit, ‘Rip It Up’ with ‘A Girl Like You’ in ’94 and now in 2007 – he’s back back back – and what’s more he gets better every time he returns. Collins precluded the album with ‘You’ll Never Know (My Love)’ a gorgeous little tune idly hovering somewhere between Elvis Costello, Burt Bacharach and Super Furry Animals and the remainder of the album offers a similarly attractive bag of wistful introspection, gently acerbic wordplay and oodles and oodles of romance, opening with the lush, ticking mantra of ‘One Is A Lonely Number’ and culminating with the rockabilly skank and shuffle of the uplifting ‘The I Cried’.
It’s a handsome and soul searching record, lonely and relaxing but bristling with all the usual riddle and guile we’ve come to associate with the man and rarely putting a foot out of place whether it’s the frail domestic beauty of tracks like ‘Home Again’, or the brooding glory of epics like ‘Leviathan’.
Recorded at West Heath, his own North West London studio between 2004 and 2005 the album was completed earlier this year following a long period of rehabilitation.
The sound of man perfectly at home with his genius.