WHATEVER happened to David McAlmont, the extraordinary, high voice of McAlmont and Butler’s top-ten hit Yes? He is back, playing York on Sunday on his first solo British tour; this musical son of Croydon whose three-and-a-half-octave vocal range once stirred the Melody Maker to eulogise: “One day he will open his mouth and a cathedral will fall out”.

“I’ve not been on tour since 2002 but I’ve been unlucky, not bringing out as many albums as I wanted,” says David, who turns 44 this spring.

“The last one was in 2005, Set One – You Go To My Head, which was an album of covers that I made as a jazz trio with Neville Malcolm on bass and Guy Davies, my main collaborator, on piano.

“That was on a label called Ether that went bust but the album became a collector’s record as it’s now extremely rare – though we still have a few copies to sell at gigs and I hang on to a few for posterity as I don’t even have the masters.”

If it were not too delicate a question to ask, York Twenty4Seven wanted to know where David McAlmont had been since then. “What’s happened to me since that record?” he says, as if asking himself the same question. “I think I lost my way a little… But I’m working my way back. I think the comeback more or less began with the Michael Nyman record I made.”

Michael Nyman, eh? There’s another impressive name to add to Suede’s Bernard Butler and Nyman’s fellow film score composer, David Arnold, on his list of collaborators, along with Craig Armstrong, Boo Hewerdine and Courtney Pine.

“In the depth of my despair, I said a prayer and asked what I should do,” says David. He does not specify who answered his call, but the consequence was that he joined Facebook. “And who should respond on Facebook but Michael Nyman,” he says.

What did the composer say? “He said ‘Hi’…and I didn’t believe it was him. I thought it was someone winding me up, but I sent an email back just in case saying how much I liked his soundtrack for Wonderland, and he wrote back, ‘Maybe you’d like to do something with the music from that film?’.”

They arranged to meet over a meal at the Fishworks in Islington. “It was an interesting meeting because we discovered we both liked a painting called The Raft Of The Medusa by the French Romantic painter Théodore Gericault,” says David. They went on to make The Glare song cycle, released through the minimalist Nyman’s MN Records label and David was elated.

“That record was a vindication and a validation. Before that, I thought it was time to give up and accept that things happen to some people and not to others. I thought I should go and get a job, but I couldn’t get one. I tried to get a job selling music in a classical music store,” he says.

Now he is bringing routine and structure to making his music.

“I’ve been working with Guy Davies, over in Ireland,” he says. “Two weeks in January, and now I’ve been back there for a week, having a break for songwriting, and I think we’re on to our 19th song, as well as doing the touring since February.”

None of those new songs will feature in Sunday night’s set at Fibbers. Instead the tour marks the release of McAlmont’s live album and DVD, Music Live From Leicester Square, recorded at the Leicester Square Theatre, London, last November with special guest Bernard Butler.

As on that album, released in February on Cherry Red Records, McAlmont will revisit the likes of Yes, You Do, Diamonds Are Forever, Lose My Faith and Isn’t It A Pity at Sunday’s York show.

“Guy and I agreed that we needed to tell the tale of the first 18 years of music I’ve done – and it’s been rapturously received so far,” he says.

And so it should because David McAlmont has a unique voice, one that we press him to describe.

“I think it’s a very bizarre sound for a man to make, so it makes for an extraordinary instrument,” he says. “If it was a woman, it would be very good, but as it’s a man singing like that, it has the wow factor.”

• David McAlmont plays Fibbers, York, on Sunday, 7.30pm, supported by Jess Gardham Band. Tickets: £15.