Stilgoe in the Shed, the UK vocalist, pianist and songwriter's eighth album, recreates the series of daily online shows which Stilgoe had gamely performed from the bottom of his garden during lockdown.

Selected earlier this year by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’, Jimmy Webb's classic ‘Wichita Lineman’ provides the strangely apt opener, with its lonesome protagonist attempting to make a human connection. Excerpted from the 1944 musical On the Town, with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, the blues-inflected ‘Some Other Time’ continues the elegiac mood, before Stilgoe supplies an all-embracing, adrenalised blast of fun with the diverting wordplay of Rodgers and Hart's ‘Mountain Greenery’. Stilgoe neatly sidesteps the unadulterated cheese of ‘How Are Things In Glocca Mora?’ by performing it as a rhapsodic instrumental.

First recorded by the brilliant Liane Carroll as the title track of her 2015 album on Linn Records, the Stilgoe-penned ‘Seaside’ is a standout, one of those rare songs that, on first hearing, is immediately absorbed into your consciousness.

Produced by James McMillan, the 15-song album also judiciously mines Stilgoe's impressive back catalogue, with the singer revisiting ‘Rainbow Connection’ from his 2016 album Songs On Film: The Sequel. Further highlights include a many-angled exploration of Joni Mitchell's ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, Stevie Wonder's benignly uplifting ‘Happier Than The Morning Sun’, plus a dramatic take on Cole Porter's ‘In The Still Of The Night’. Saving the best until last, Stilgoe pours his heart into Sondheim's No One Is Alone, a song which seems to take on new resonances here.