AFTER taking up the chance to tour with James Blunt, Teddy Thompson had to reschedule his sold-out gig at The Duchess in York from last September to Sunday night.

Last autumn’s tickets remain valid for a date that now forms part of a January tour to promote both his Top Ten album, A Piece Of What You Need, and his new single, The Things I Do, released earlier this week on Blue Thumb/Universal.

The album, his fourth, was produced by Marius de Vries, whose diverse credits include Madonna, Björk and Rufus Wainwright.

“This is a happy record,” muses Thompson. “Well, maybe not happy, but upbeat. Actually, maybe not upbeat, but it does have some up-tempo songs. Anyway, it’s as close as I’ve gotten to making the record I’ve always wanted to make.

“I knew that I wanted this one to be more adventurous, with strong, solid rhythm tracks and beautiful airy touches to support the songs, and Marius gets all the credit for that. “He’s taken the arrangements up a notch. There was nothing off-limits, nothing that was too weird or too difficult. I could tell him that I wanted something to sound like fairies dancing around a maypole, and he’d know what button to push to get that.”

Thompson, the New York-based son of folk rock royalty Richard and Linda, applied both a sense of purpose and humour to an album typified by its title track.

“That song was born from frustration with the state of music,” he says. “I liked it as an album title because I thought it sounded like an offering, like this record is a small bit of truth. “For most people, it’s gonna be an absolutely minuscule piece of what they need, but I’d like to think that I’m contributing some tiny little building block of something worthwhile, rather than just adding to the massive pile of disposable rubbish.”

Far from adding to the rubbish pile, Thompson has recorded his best album yet, and his autumn detour with Blunt has merely whetted the appetite all the more for Sunday’s show, especially now that American singer-songwriter Tift Merritt will be the opening act.