McRae gets siege mentality

Tom McRae, a singer-songwriter not known for his rose-tinted outlook, has had a Christmas that might justify a gloomy view. What should have been 10 relaxed days at home in Graham Road has turned into a hellish two weeks of the Hackney siege. With his second album imminent and tours scheduled in Europe and America, it couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time.

McRae, 28, has been on the road for much of the past two years, since the release of a successful debut album. It won him Mercury and Brit Award nominations, as well as a reputation as the dark prince of his genre, leading the New Acoustic Movement. With a guitar and a painfully bittersweet timbre, he laid his twisted soul bare, drawing comparisons with the late Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley.

The anger and weariness of that beguiling debut haven't left him, but he can now afford the luxury of a band to match his more expansive songwriting. Ominously his new album, Just Like Blood (DB Records), which is released next month, includes a prophetically-titled track, Line of Fire.

"On Boxing Day I heard shots but you get used to that when you live in Hackney," he says. "So I ignored it. But when I saw a Police cordon outside I went to investigate. As soon as I stepped into the street a policeman shouted at me to get out of the road."

He took refuge in a nearby pub to watch the Boxing Day football, but was again refused entry to his first-floor flat on his return. Concerned for his girlfriend, who is epileptic, he was eventually allowed back under armed escort the following day. The couple were then housebound for five days with curtains drawn, allowing McRae to work on the set list for his upcoming promotional tour.

"We had to sign a sort of disclaimer with the SO19 firearms division, which basically meant that if we got shot it was our fault," he says phlegmatically. "Every couple of days the gunman took a random pot-shot but we just got used to it."

The police, however, were becoming increasingly anxious and matters came to a head on New Year's Day. McRae was awoken at 5am by a firefighter who had broken in through the back window to evacuate them. The couple sleepily gathered a change of clothes and were escorted under cover of darkness along the railway line to Stoke Newington Police Station.

"From there we were driven to temporary accommodation but it looked so bad we couldn't face it and ended up sleeping between friends and relatives," sighs McRae. "I was back to living out of a bag; it was like being on tour again."

JUST when it looked like things couldn't get worse, they did. McRae's touring band fell apart under pressure of other commitments. Pressed for time, he hired replacements and started rehearsing. Under armed escort, the arch-miserabilist returned to the flat to grab essential guitars, keyboards and amps. "I could only take what I could carry. I couldn't ask the armed escort to help, of course, because he was busy carrying a machine gun."

His girlfriend has since returned home but McRae, needing freedom to rehearse, decided to stay with friends. Despite the turmoil he remains upbeat. This month's Q magazine-describes his new release as "an album that will be hard to better this year". He sees it as "a step on" from the stripped, raw emotion of his debut.

Just Like Blood raises McRae above the gloom of acoustic troubadours. "The themes are still pain, misery, death and revenge, but I didn't want to repeat myself stylistically. I had more money to spend on this album so although in some respects it's darker, I've been able to sweeten the pill in order to seduce people," he says.

It's a more eclectic, layered album, brimming with ambition and deft lyrical touches. From the skewed percussion and haunting wood chimes of opener A Day Like Today, it is clear that McRae has grown artistically.

"Singer-songwriters are a despised breed," he admits. "If they ban foxhunting they will probably turn on singersongwriters. I want to get away from that label with this album."

He leaves for Paris on Monday to start a four-month promotional tour but will miss London - despite the experiences of the past two weeks.

"I moved here from a Suffolk village because it is exciting and dangerous. I am still inspired by it, although it's a shame that gun crime has become part and parcel of this city."

Tom McRae plays at Shepherd's Bush Empire (0870 771 2000) on 5 March.