Kyle Falconer’s solo act offers view into mature songwriting

On a Thursday night in Fife, in PJ Molloys, Dunfermline, one of the country’s most under-appreciated small live venues, a rebirth was happening. Kyle Falconer is well-kent around these parts.

He pointed out that people from Fife and his native Dundee are “all the same, really” (“although why’s your blue bin for your normal rubbish here, what’s that about?” asked his bassist Ross Nichol).

Yet to the public at large he’s almost as infamous for alcohol and drug-fuelled incidents involving the authorities as his band The View were famed in their 2007 heyday for major hit Same Jeans.

In which case his debut solo album No Thank You, due out in July, is about so much more than just a successful musician trying to strike out on his own.

A father for a little over a year now, Falconer, 30, played songs from the new record here that were revealed as a cathartic exorcism of his old life, yet not in a painful or unpleasant manner.

From the record’s lead track and the gig’s opening song Poor Me, which riffs on the old self-pitying drinker’s lament “poor me / another drink” alongside a bouncy Faces riff, these tracks were upbeat and content.

“I shoulda been dead / that’s what the therapist said,” he hollered over the scat-singing country of The Therapist. “I’m putting bottles of whisky and vodka behind me / they’ll never get the better of me / as I’m working on the family tree,” he sang on Family Tree, renouncing self-destruction in favour of being a good dad.

The Faces comparisons hold out, with another new track bearing the sound of Handbags & Gladrags about it, while older View songs were deliberately short of their aggressive party-starting.

How Long was played solo on a mandolin and Face for the Radio on an acoustic guitar, while Falconer’s four-piece band stepped back and let the audience’s voices carry Superstar Tradesman alongside the singer.

Any View fan would have agreed it was a fairly dramatic change of pace, but Falconer can be proud that his songwriting has managed to grow and mature with his life.