AA: What have you being doing lately, you sort of disappeared?
KS: Yeah I did for a while...there was a period after the last EP I did (The Planes) where I just wasn't writing anything I was happy with, the records I'd done always had this feeling coming off them - to my mind anyway - and I just wasn't feeling anything strongly enough, I suppose, so to me there was no point in making any records. I remember a lot of people telling me at the time that "I was fucking mad". I didn't really care...there's a nice theme running through those first few singles and the album/EP. I'm glad I stopped making music at the time.
I've been extraordinarily lucky with the way people have liked my stuff...someone liking Boyfriend in a very personal way and going out of their way to do something for the band. I would have betrayed that trust, and to be honest this is the only sort of music I know how to make.

AA: What's your new album like?
KS: Jesus it's great...it flows. It's a weird thing to try and explain but if you write a really good song it flows naturally...it's effortless...almost writes itself.
I went back to live in Ireland two years ago and I started to write songs again and it was like a hell or heaven, I'm not sure which, because I said I'd never make records again and suddenly I felt "I'd love people to hear this". People would love this...people who never heard my stuff before and people who still liked Understand. I've just taken the music on to somewhere different.

AA: What's the difference between the old Brian and the new Brian?
KS: A Sense Of Humour...that's something I think I needed to find, I don't take myself quite that seriously anymore...thank God. I'm not as miserable as I was in my early twenties, maybe it's a phase people go through at a certain point, you're quite happy being miserable and you don't want anyone to get in the way of your being almost underwater.
The new stuff has that warmth to it that I always look for in records but it's Pop Music. Somewhere in-between The La's and The Blue Nile. There's a lot of myself on this record...about what I feel about things... now...I'm quite curious as to what people will think, it might make them feel a little uncomfortable, and I like that because I've said things about the way I see life now...and I haven't heard any thing like this said on a record before.
I just did it for me really.

AA: When's it out?
KS: We were about a week away from finishing it and the recording was suspended. It's out of my hands now, someone else will decide if it gets finished, I've done everything I possibly can to make the record and it's not my decision.

AA: What are you listening to at the moment?
KS: Lots of stuff...I love Stina Nordenstam's "Then She Closed Her Eyes" LP, and Ron Sexsmith. I still love Miracle Legion. The Irish bands The Revenants and The Sewing Room. Lucinda Williams (not to be confused with Victoria Williams). East River Pipe. Autchre. Orbital. Lambchop. Sparklehorse, Rex, Popsicle
Two years ago I heard the most fantastic record by an American singer called Iris De Ment, the album is called "My Life", If you liked Understand go out and buy this album, I think she kinda wrote it about the death of her parents and a few other things, the melodies are great but she added something very personal to it, it has some other quality...it's just so beautiful, it kind of helpled me get back into music again. A song called "Calling For You" deserves a special mention. Hear it. It's vaguely country music and I write pop music ...but it's one of my records.
I kinda love Lucinda Williams and Iris De Ment...they're slow to release records but you know when they do.. you're going to get something very special.

AA: Fave songs at the moment?
KS: Maybe not at the moment but I loved Billy Bragg's "Tank Park Salute", a song he wrote about his father - grief is a very hard thing to put into a song...I mean you can turn up like Pearl Jam and growl, but to make it work quietly is a much harder thing.
I don't want to mis-quote them but there's a wonderful line about seeing his father's name in "the memorial book" and "the commiserations of all your friends and all your relations". There's that feeling of questioning things - life or something - taking a moment to stop and reflect, Arthur Miller does that in all his best plays, and I think the best songs do too. I think Billy Bragg was a tank driver...I know he was in the army...maybe that's what the title means...I don't really need to know. The song took lumps out of me.
Still fascinated by Miracle Legions "All For The Best" from their "Surprise, Surprise" LP, it still blows me away, a friend taped John Peel playing it years ago, hypnotic drum track breaking up a beautifully written day in the life of a little kid - "watched my brother cutting grass outside". I met someone from Radiohead at a party recently and they're huge Miracle Legion fans. There's a warmth in Miracle Legion (in something like "Gigantic Transatlantic Phonecall" or "Say Hello") that I recognise in my own stuff.

AA: You must see a big difference in you record Label, Setanta, since you last worked with them...Edwyn Collins...Divine Comedy...all the hits they've had.
KS: I can't really fault Setanta, I doubt I'd be tolerated anywhere else, even if they don't let me finish this album, it will be financial reasons that stop them.. not due to any lack of any committment on their part.
I mean I did completely fuck them over before - in stopping when I did - I mean I didn't talk to anyone in Setanta for maybe three years, then I rang them up out of the and within a few weeks I was back in the studio and I'd been given a new publishing deal. There is no other record label where that would happen. We were lost in 1991 with Understand we didn't fit in with any Irish band scene...we were complete outsiders and they gave us a home.
I suppose I've known Keith Cullen a while - I don't really know the other people who work for him as well as I know him - but they're young and bright and they choose to go to work every day in Elephant and Castle and I'm sure they could work for snobbier companies, for better money, in swankier locations, but they choose to work there, so they must be into what they do.

AA: So what's keeps you making music?
KS: I have an album written to follow this one - I suppose just really small things, I got a few letters when Understand came out - yeah a lot of people heard Understand and a certain amount where moved by it...and a few wrote...and they're the people that make a difference...that make you think "Maybe I'm not that shit after all". Never underestimate the difference that makes...I don't know...I used to think "Is anyone actually hearing what I'm saying on this song", there is stuff on Understand I thought "Jesus...is anyone hearing what I'm saying". You just record a song and you send it out into that void and hope someone hears it and understands. I sound like the typical self-obsessed songwriter I know but it's that quality of "giving yourself away" that has always endeared bands and songwriters to me (like Pete Shelley), I think that's how you get people to go out and buy your Digipack single, two weeks in a row, they just have that connection with you. My favourite bands had that connection with me.