Newton Faulkner - The new record has got a nice loose vibe about it

The singer/songwriter, whose 2007 debut album Hand Built by Robots was certified double platinum, was on the train to Cornwall with friends.

The train was full and he was weighed down with a pram, guitars, bags that contained clothes and other ephemera.

He turned to his travelling companion and realised that, despite his huge success, he was still making the same journeys that he made long before he became one of the UK's biggest pop stars. And, thankfully, he was glad.

"I do this because I love the music. That's all I ever do. When I'm relaxing, I'm not thinking about doing something else, or being somewhere else; I'm playing my guitar and strumming a new tune."

Faulkner is hitting the road to promote his new album, Write It On Your Skin, which went to number one earlier this year.

He said: "I think there's two main things that changed. One is that I've just settled in to what I do and I've found my place in the industry. It's weird, you do a couple of albums and you learn different things from both of them. I probably learned more from the second than the first in a lot of ways.

"It's weird listening back to this one. It's quite bizarre to me to hear how effortless it sounds. There's obviously a huge amount of work that goes into it, but I was much harder on it in terms of the writing making sure structures were in place.

"But in terms of the performances, because I'd recorded a lot of it at home, I mean I did an awful lot of it in my pants! I did a lot of the guitar and the vocal is either in my pants or my dressing gown or just late at night when everyone's asleep, but I can't sleep and just need something to do.

"I think that's given it a much more relaxed vibe, it's very not clinical.

"You can hear all sorts of things going on in the background; we weren't in fully soundproofed studios. You can hear cars driving by almost. It's got a nice, loose vibe about it. The other thing that I think is different just in terms of my approach is that the second album I did just to be recorded, because I was following up on the recorded success of the first one.

"But between the second and the third, I've been gigging relentlessly and I think that's where I belong. So, I wrote this stuff to be played live and ironically it's made a much better record."

Newton Faulkner plays Birmingham's O2 Academy on October 18 and tickets are available at www.o2academy birmingham.co.uk