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With a work ethic that could best be described as lackadaisical, Guy Bailey has very much been the master of his own destiny since he stepped away from The Quireboys.

He played the familiar ramshackle ne’er-do-well, if briefly, with The Peckham Cowboys, but has drifted towards the dark side (more an after-hours bar than a rift in The Force) with his Thirsty project.

Though Chris Kimsey (Rolling Stones) produced these late-night sessions, Bailey and poet Irina D are less The Faces and more Leonard Cohen or even Nick Cave. Bailey’s downbeat vocals (‘vocals’ might be generous) are suited to the dark heart of songs like the elegiac-sounding Libertine or the ever-brooding Surgery.

Philip Wilding is a novelist, journalist, scriptwriter, biographer and radio producer. As a young journalist he criss-crossed most of the United States with bands like Motley Crue, Kiss and Poison (think the Almost Famous movie but with more hairspray). More latterly, he’s sat down to chat with bands like the slightly more erudite Manic Street Preachers, Afghan Whigs, Rush and Marillion.