Debut solo album and Brighton date for I Am Kloot's Peter Alexander Jobson

Peter made his name as bass guitarist and keyboard player in I Am Kloot. After six albums and 16 successful years together the trio of Jobson, drummer Andy Hargreaves and singer/guitarist John Bramwell broke up after a final performance at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the 2016 Meltdown Festival on London’s South Bank.

Now he is enjoying a very different and brand-new chapter in his career: “It is quite late on for a solo album but I've been planning this for a long time. I must have sat down with my good mate Guy Garvey from Elbow a long time ago and told him about what I was going to do and told him about what it was going to be called and what the artwork was going to be. We would go through the songs and I demo’ed them up. He has always been my sounding board, and I've got pictures of him with a white board with notes on about the album from 15 years ago. That was a long time ago.

“We did the last gig with I Am Kloot in 2016. I am living in London now. I've got two daughters and I moved to London to be with my partner, and everything has changed quite dramatically for me since Kloot stop playing together. I kept myself in beans and bog roll by doing music scores for films and TV dramas and writing songs for other people which I enjoyed immensely. But in the background I was always planning that I was going to do something of my own. It has taken me a long time to get this together but in fact it was ready before Covid. But I saw lots of friends that released albums during Covid, albums that just disappeared. I took the decision that I was not going to do that.”

Peter says making the album was one of the most cathartic things that he has ever done: “I have found my own voice now. I don't usually sing and I never sung with Kloot. That was the journey. That was the struggle for me. I have ended up with quite a conversational style because I've got quite a low voice like Lou Reed. And that's the voice that I found. I wanted to have the authenticity with my accent. I wanted it to be in my own accent as much as possible. I wanted it to have that Northumberland twang but also my move to Manchester and my move to London. When I move to Manchester that's when I got involved with I Am Kloot and did all the things that I wanted to do musically but now I just want to sing in my own voice.

“I sing in a low register and that can sometimes sound like it's in no way melodic but it is melodic. It is just so low down. I can't sing high. But for me really if you can communicate what you want to communicate, it doesn't have to be perfect. In fact imperfections are what make us individuals. It comes out of finding myself with the authenticity of the Northumberland twang and just a sense of being intimate. I want people to feel like they're sitting there with me. I just want to open my mouth and for it to come out naturally.”

And as he says it has been cathartic: “That's the thing about performing. It is in no way an effort. It's not work or a chore or toil. It comes from being who you are on stage and off stage and that's what I have learned. I just found my voice and what is comfortable for me. I found out who I am without having to pretend to be something I am not.

“I don't wish I'd done it years ago. I was not ready. I wasn't the singer in the band. And it has just happened for a reason now. I think it takes time to know what you want to do and to be able to do it and also to find something to say that is worth saying. And I like to think that with this I am saying something that is worth saying.

“So it is really exciting for me now. I think it's really good to hold something back until you get to 50 years old and then you can do it with all the excitement that you would have done at the age of 30 but you're just keeping yourself fresh and enjoying the struggle but doing something that is worthwhile and enjoying the new challenge.”