Following a series of triumphant festival performances, British singer-songwriter Nick Mulvey embarks on a new tour in support of Wake Up Now - the follow-up to his standout debut album, First Mind.

Your new album, Wake Up Now, is out now. Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Sure! It’s an album I wrote in parallel with my wife’s pregnancy and the birth of our first kid. We recorded it last October in Real World studios, which is Peter Gabriel’s studio out in Wiltshire. The songs look at the role of self-enquiry in our understanding of our predicament. I was ready as a writer to start having a bit more of an outward perspective. My first record was insular, and I think I was ready as a writer to look outwards. That feeling was amplified by becoming a dad and having that natural thing where you have a sense of responsibility for your small part of the world. Also, it was a product of the fact of writing an album in 2016 - it felt impossible not to talk about some of the big issues going on that are so prevalent right now. If you’ve grown up in the horn of Africa, or you were made homeless because there’s not enough support for people at a certain level in housing, then issues have been screamingly loud for a long time, but the difference is that now, they allow for all of us. It’s an increasingly exhausting act to be in denial about what’s going on in the world. I couldn’t do it. This album is a response to that.

Does it differ much from your debut album, First Mind?
The songs being more outward-looking is reflected a bit in the recording process as well, which is a difference between the two. I realised I needed to record in a very live way, with a group of musicians all in the same room. That way, you have sonic spillage over the microphone, so that there are symbols on the guitar mics and guitar mics on the vocal mics. It means you can’t be such a control freak because you can’t edit afterwards as much. You can’t take out that instrument or rejig that structure. You have to commit to the structure and you have to go for the take. All of that was enormously helpful for me as an artist. It gave me a lot of confidence just to be like ‘fuck it, let’s do it like this’. It was a lot of fun; it freed me up just to play music and made it a really exciting journey.

What’s the meaning behind the title?
The album is fundamentally about waking up to the mystery of life and celebrating being alive, and I don’t mean just being alive in the sense that we normally mean. I think we’ve constantly overlooked the mystery of our own being, and that has a key role in our over-consumption, which is driving the planet to the edge . Therefore a greater sense of the mystery of absolutely every moment of every day has a role to play in our sense of knowing that we are already enough -  and that’s a joyful thing. That sense of joy and wonder is hard to feel if you live in debt or live with chronic pain, for example. It’s hard to walk around going ‘oh every day is wonderful’.

The track Myela was born out of the refugee crisis. Can you elaborate on this?
It was something I felt very strongly about, as was the cynicism of much of the British media. I was confused by that and wanted to write about it. I had this chord sequence that was brewing for many months. Loosely speaking, it was kind of flamenco, although my Italian friend that I worked with on this song, Frederico Bruno, said that the sequence reminded him of Southern Italy - so it’s kind of Mediterranean, and that was important. We recognised that we couldn’t write our own words about it because what experience do we have, so we decided to do some research and do it properly. We were inspired by Peter Gabriel’s song, Biko, which is about Steve Biko and apartheid in South Africa in 1980, and which takes a more journalistic approach. We looked at online archives of refugees’ accounts of their own journeys, and the song started to flow from that. We were fictionalising these characters. For example, there’s a 10-year-old boy called Deogratius from Nigera, and when they asked him why he’d gone to Italy, he said he’d rather die once in the sea than die every day staying at home. From a 10-year-old kid that was just devastating to read, and that became the song. It was something I felt like I wanted to write. It’s not perfect - people have told me that the ‘I am your neighbour’ bit at the end is a bit wordy, but the thing is, it’s not saying a song is going to change the world. I don’t think a song could change the world. People could change the world, but that’s why songs matter, because our attitudes and actions are all shaped by the things we absorb, so I wanted to write something that mattered.

Last year saw the birth of your son, Inka. How’s fatherhood treating you?
It’s amazing! It’s a wonder. We live in a barn where there are no stairs, but at the moment, whilst I’m releasing the album, we’ve all moved to London, and there are stairs in this house and he just can’t believe it! We just go up and down, up and down, up and down, and I’m happy because he’s going to tire himself out and have a good sleep. That was me from 6.45am until about 8.30am, just up and down the stairs - it was joyful. It’s hardcore as well. I’ve been very busy this summer and it’s really stretched me to the edge. Being a parent brings up all your shit, you know - you realise where you’re at, not where you think you’re at. It’s an amazing test, and I’m failing and having a wonderful time, if you know what I mean.

What’s your dream collaboration?
I would love to collaborate with PJ Harvey. I think she’s amazing. I love and admire the way that she dedicates her art to speaking about things that matter, I’m really inspired by that right now.

What’s your first musical memory?
There was a lot of music in the house. My dad would always crank the music up and really enjoy it. Stuff like ZZ Top in the car. When you’re five years old, that’s massive. It completely blows your mind and is a really powerful experience. A little bit later, my sister used to feed me a lot of music, the cooler stuff like Massive Attack and Portishead and hip-hop, De Le Soul and stuff like that. She fed me a lot of hip-hop and drum and bass and jungle - a lot of stuff I went on to love.

You’re well known on the festival circuit. Do you have a favourite festival?
I always love Green Man Festival. The curation, they always nail it there, and it’s a beautiful site. I love Womad - always a winner. I love Glastonbury as well.

You opened Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage in 2014. What an achievement…
Yeah, it was awesome. It was the beginning of something, I feel. I still feel that on the second record. I feel like I have something to prove on this record and I’m excited to see where it goes.

You run a series of Meet Me There events. Can you tell us a little bit about those?
It came from when we were releasing singles from my last album. We’d just got home, I was chatting to fans on the internet and my wife said, ‘What do you think would happen if we put a postcode and a time?’ I have a song called Meet Me There, which was the single that was on the radio at that time, so we just thought, let’s try it. We put the name of a park around the corner from our house, 7pm, Meet Me There, and about eight people turned up. It was brilliant, and our mate came down and we filmed it. We never explained it, we just put the film up the next day. A week later, we did a different location somewhere else in Central London and 30 people came. A month later, it was 100.

You’re playing Birmingham’s O2 Institute in October. What can audiences expect from your show?
It’s new level for me. This band is freer and we have a deeper connection than I’ve ever had before with musicians. I’m really, really excited about this UK tour. We’re going to make a lot of people happy and we’re happy doing it. I can’t wait for them to meet the band. To my left on stage, so to their right, is Frederico Bruno, and he is amazing. He’s a really special character and he’s having a ball. He’s very free and he’s playing a lot of different instruments. Then, on my right, stage left, is Fifi. These are really old, dear friends of mine, and I can’t believe we’re all in a band together. She’s a secret weapon - she’s amazing. People are going to enjoy it.

Nick Mulvey plays O2 Institute on Monday 9 October.

Interview by Lauren Foster