THE indie rocker reflects on how he felt his career was on a downward trajectory until he created his new album One Man Band.

With the likes of Alex Turner, Jamie T and Paul Weller among his past collaborators, it was always going to be a challenge for Miles Kane to up the ante. But it seems he has found something special after looking closer to home.

The Birkenhead-born singer went back close to his roots by heading to Liverpool to record his new album One Man Band after a period of feeling like his career was on a downward trajectory.

The city’s tradition of music may have played its part but Kane gives credit to the family collaboration behind the record.

His cousin James Skelly, lead singer of The Coral, produced the 11-track offering while another cousin Alfie Skelly released it on his label Modern Sky.

“Me and our James and our Alfie, we really connected again as a family a few years back, and after my last album, I kind of felt frustrated, and I felt a bit deflated and I felt everything was on a bit of a landslide,” Kane, 37, admits.

“And I had a bit of fire in me and a bit of anger and I wrote the song called One Man Band and that kickstarted this album.

“And I sent it to our James and he’s like, ‘This is boss, you need to make an album like this’.”

With its sing-along melodies and punchy guitar riffs, the album conveys the bubbling energy which is part and parcel of Kane’s personality, an element he does not try to hide.

“Not to sound dramatic and Liza Minnelli about it,” he begins before correcting himself. “Actually I am quite Liza Minnelli so I’ll take that, why am I trying to hide that?

“It was nice to have that support from my family, and they are as invested as much as I am and I haven’t felt that feeling for a while.”

Kane admits he does not think he and James would have worked as well had they attempted the project earlier in their careers as “egos would have got in the way”.

“I’m going Judy Garland again here, it’s like a Rocky film and all these stars aligned,” he muses.

“Our Alfie’s putting it out in the Liverpool label and our James produced it and we’ve come together as this family and it’s like the indie Scouse mafia.”

Kane’s 20-year career has been expansive, seeing him find his feet in short-lived bands The Little Flames and The Rascals, before breaking away to form The Last Shadow Puppets with Arctic Monkeys frontman Turner.

Together they have released two number one albums and Kane has occasionally popped up to perform with Turner’s band, most recently in June at their show at Emirates Stadium in London.

His first solo album came in 2011 with Colour Of The Trap, followed by 2013’s Don’t Forget Who You Are, 2018’s Coup de Grace and 2022’s Change The Show.

Despite all the albums reaching number 12 or higher in the charts, the indie rocker admits he felt like he was in a spiral until this latest album “resparked” his career.

Kane has dug deeper this time, exploring how he can become closed up within relationships and addressing his faults.

The opening track dives straight into this minefield and he considers it an “honest portrayal” of his own behaviour.

“Sometimes when we talk about relationships, I find it hard and I get claustrophobic,” he admits.

“And when you go into therapy and stuff like that, there’s a deeper thing of, ‘You’re an only child, you just got brought up with your mum’, there’s a whole thing to unravel there.

“And in relationships after, like a year, I feel this thing where I sort of panic…

“In the chorus it says, ‘I come undone/Then I cut and run’ – its just an honest tune, really, about them stresses sometimes, but without being ‘poor me’.”

Another track, Baggio, is inspired by Italian football great Roberto Baggio, who had a “massive impact” on how Kane developed his own identity from childhood after watching him play in the World Cup.

“Where I’m from, in the Wirral, I hadn’t really seen men up until that point even have long hair or look a bit different, and when I first saw them it kind of opened this thing in my mind.

“It was like they were sexy and they were unique and it made me think, ‘Oh, I fancy a bit of that’, and that was the start of it then.

“You get into Oasis and stuff like that and it all meshes into this one thing.

“But I think, for me on my journey of getting into who I am, and what I am today and all the different haircuts, the fashion sense, this Italian obsession, it all started with that World Cup.”

Not only did the song allow him to express those childhood emotions, but it put him on the path to meet one of his idols as, after asking a few favours, Kane managed to get the track into the hands of Baggio’s daughter, who played it for the football star.

Baggio invited the musicians to his house, a special moment captured in a short documentary shared to YouTube.

The singer says the song and the video have become “one of my favourite things I’ve ever made”.

“I should stop paying my therapists now,” he jokes with a hearty laugh after deep diving into some of the more personal aspects of the album, before adding: “It doesn’t get any more real, to be honest, that’s what I wanted, I’ve laid it all out there.”

And what does he hope his fans take away from it? “I hope that they just feel how I feel about it and I hope that they can relate to it or they can understand it in a way they may have been through that thing or that feeling.

“Whether it’s about childhood, relationship, friends, they feel that thing too and it will help them, and it will make them want to go and have a night out as well.”

Miles Kane’s album One Man Band is out now.