Edwyn Collins, Badbae (AED Records) ****

EDWYN Collins had his world turned upside down by two brain haemorrhages in 2005, but here he is, releasing his ninth solo album, his fourth since his annus horribilis.

The first was 2007's Home Again, a title born of his gradual recovery to making music once more, but now prophetic too as Collins has indeed moved back home, leaving behind his analogue studio in London for his grandfather’s old house in Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands in 2014.

The year before he had released Understated, an album whose arcane-titled centrepiece, Forsooth, found him celebrating being "so lucky to be alive". "I feel reborn," he said over and again in his slightly weakened, yet thickened, warm voice.

Heading back to Scotland's wild north-east coast with wife Grace to set up home and new studio has had a similarly rejuvenating effect, one that sees Collins looking back to his waspish-witted Orange Juice days, both lyrically and musically, especially on Glasgow To London, as he recalls their precocious tilt at pop stardom, and I Guess We Were Young, wherein he mulls over the band's demise.

He also has re-ignited lyrics penned before 2005 but never used, as a jumping-off point for Badbae, although he now writes in a more linear, emotionally direct way without the serpentine archness of old. Where once "the possibilities are endless", to quote a phrase he found himself saying constantly in the early stages of recuperation, now this thoughts go straighter to the point. "Now I’m old, I don’t care," he deadpans on the punk-spirited Outside.

Musically, he still nods to rock and pop’s past and his own too, whether The Velvet Underground from Orange Juice's formative days, Tamla Motown, Big Star, or Northern Soul for the bracing opener It's All About You. Elsewhere, brass flourishes recall the thrill of Dexys Midnight Runners' 1980 debut, Searching For The Young Soul Rebels.

Collins now often writes of himself, his post-2005 experiences, but the most affecting song here is the closing title track, a hymn to the crofters forced to re-settle to Badbae, a village later abandoned, nearby his studio. By contrast, his re-location has been a thing of joy, as refreshing as, well, orange juice.

Charles Hutchinson