The title track is my favourite lyric I’ve ever written. Seriously. I grade my songs by how close I get to the original thrust of the idea, and this one is so close to exactly what I wanted that it’s hard to see the join.

The lyrics for ‘Raising My Own Hell’ were incredibly easy to write. Once I’d cracked the surface of the nut and understood what the narrative was — in this case, my love/hate relationship with the US — the words flowed, and in a way I rarely experience.

I was so pleased with the chord structure, too. It’s unusual, and I genuinely cannot tell you where it came from. I simply followed the melody in my head and found the chord that worked.

It’s a story song, really — one that charts my journey of discovery from childhood through to adulthood, of the American vision. Like most of us, I suspect, I was brought up on a diet of US TV cop shows, comedy, and movies, and fell hook, line, and sinker for it all.

It was only when I visited America that I began to see the cracks, and realised that nowhere is perfect — not even the Disney and Hollywood dream palaces that had formed so much of my worldview.

Don’t get me wrong — I love the place. I have many American friends and always enjoy it when I go. But there is much that is careless and dangerous about the “land of the free,” and its contradictions have frustrated and disappointed me so much over the years.

I guess, really, this could be called a love letter to the place — albeit written in ink distilled from poison ivy and diluted with tears of the damned.