In more than 20 years of running his own record label and touring operation, Paul Carrack knows more than most about taking responsibility for his own career. So when lockdown cast its unwelcome shadow on the music business, one of Britain’s most distinguished and soulful singer-songwriters was ready with his response.

The result is One On One, not just a masterful new addition to a body of work that now runs to 18 solo studio albums packed with signature songs – never mind his classic recordings with Mike and the Mechanics, Squeeze, Ace and more, including The Living Years, Over My Shoulder, Silent Running, Tempted, How Long and so on.

This is a record on which his imprint goes deeper than ever because, in creating it from his home studio base as often before, Carrack not only wrote, played and recorded the whole thing, but this time, following his muse and trusting his instincts to the very last day, even mixed the album himself. You could almost call it the result of his live-in years.

Not that One On One doesn’t contain some memorable cameos, by the likes of master guitarist Robbie McIntosh and former James Brown sideman Alfred ‘Pee Wee’ Ellis. We’ll come to those in a while, but this is a record that has Paul’s initials carved through it. It really brings to the fore that almost effortless soulfulness we’ve loved so well since his own composition How Long became a pop anthem, his first of dozens, more than four and a half decades ago.