“From the day we got here we all felt something shift in the record,” Gary Lightbody reports on snowpatrol.net. “We’d spent the last seven weeks in the pastoral womb of Grouse Lodge and hadn’t seen neon for close to two months so it could just be we’re all now suffering from toxic shock. Think we needed a change.

“So from the cosy bosom of nature we find ourselves in the electric embrace of the city and it feels good. Great to be around people and buildings and traffic and bars – oh bars!”

In between reading Iain Banks’ The Steep Approach To Garbadale and listening to the likes of Fleet Foxes, Wolf Parade and Fanfarlo – he recommends you visit www.myspace.com/fanfarlo tout de suite – Gary has been lavishing loads of love on the new record, which is due in spring 2009.