Peter Capaldi releases a new album, Sweet Illusions, in March 2025, produced by fellow Glaswegian Robert Howard of The Blow Monkeys.
The forthcoming album is a beautifully understated slice of sophisticated pop music. It will be released by local record label Last Night From Glasgow - first single Bin Night debuted last month.
Although best known for his extensive career as an actor, Capaldi first became involved in music as a Glasgow School of Art student, when he fronted punk group The Dreamboys, part of the city’s eclectic 80s music scene. Four decades on, he released his debut solo album St Christopher in 2021.
There’s a lot of Glasgow in Peter’s music: echoes of his hometown set against a canvas of Americana guitar and retro synths. “I kept going back to a Glaswegian art school ‘80s vibe,” Peter told me.
“The city itself, how it has such a power about it. Glasgow is a wonderful, noirish, synthy setting for things."
Watch our exclusive chat with Peter Capaldi about his second album, Sweet Illusions, to be released by Last Night From Glasgow in March.
The forthcoming album is a beautifully understated slice of sophisticated pop music. It will be released by local record label Last Night From Glasgow - first single Bin Night debuted last month.
Although best known for his extensive career as an actor, Capaldi first became involved in music as a Glasgow School of Art student, when he fronted punk group The Dreamboys, part of the city’s eclectic 80s music scene. Four decades on, he released his debut solo album St Christopher in 2021.
There’s a lot of Glasgow in Peter’s music: echoes of his hometown set against a canvas of Americana guitar and retro synths. “I kept going back to a Glaswegian art school ‘80s vibe,” Peter told me.
“The city itself, how it has such a power about it. Glasgow is a wonderful, noirish, synthy setting for things."
Watch our exclusive chat with Peter Capaldi about his second album, Sweet Illusions, to be released by Last Night From Glasgow in March.
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MusicTranscript
00:00Good morning, Peter.
00:02Morning.
00:03Good morning, up-and-coming Glasgow musician, Peter.
00:07There you go, it's incredible, it's 66.
00:10It's all happening.
00:12You said both albums are rooted in a version of Glasgow.
00:17I thought that was quite fun because, you know,
00:19I've talked to other musicians who, you know,
00:25the Glasgow that they base their songs on or their characters are,
00:28it isn't necessarily the one that they inhabit,
00:30if you know what I mean, there's a kind of version of it
00:33that either takes on an American quality or a noir-ish quality
00:37and stuff like that.
00:39In your mind's eye, did you have a particular version of Glasgow
00:42that some of your characters were emerging from?
00:45Yeah, because really what I was doing was picking up
00:48where I left off 40 years ago when I was an art student in a band
00:52and, you know, when Simple Minds and all that were knocking about
00:57and Strawberry Switch played and Autodemages and all that in Glasgow
01:01was a bit kind of happening place.
01:05So I was just, it's that kind of range,
01:09but I mean it is quite cinematic that even then,
01:11I mean the concept of Glasgow was always quite cinematic
01:14and quite dramatic.
01:16It kind of suited to that.
01:19So I'm unashamedly nostalgic, you know, for that period
01:22and I think a lot of the songs and the sounds of the songs
01:26would fit into that period quite well.
01:30I talked to PJ Moore from the Blue Nile
01:34and he talked about that period in the 80s
01:38and Bobby from the Bluebells has talked about it as well,
01:41about that there was all kinds of folk arriving up in Glasgow
01:44trying to find the next best sound and stuff like that.
01:47Do you think there was a version of things
01:49where you could have been sitting in Nico's having a Brandy Alexander
01:52and you could have actually signed a record contact at that stage?
01:56Well, me personally.
01:57Yeah, because I mean there was people who were like barmen,
02:00there was people that were waitresses,
02:02there were people who were like artists and stuff like that
02:04and then next week they were on top of the pops, Peter,
02:06so you could have been in the right place at the right time is all.
02:10Well, obviously we weren't in the right place at the right time
02:14and it wasn't for what I'm trying.
02:17That never really worked out for us
02:19but we would have loved something like that.
02:21And yes, of course, that's very much what the vibe was on the scene really
02:27was people would be knocking about Great Western Roads
02:30dressed as baby goths and then the next week they'd be signed
02:35and then the next month they'd be on top of the pops or whatever.
02:38So it seemed quite possible for all these things to happen
02:41but sadly it didn't happen to us.
02:45Why do you think kids had that confidence at that time?
02:48I asked Jim Kerr, you know, like his first interview,
02:50he was a wee guy from Torrey Glen in his first interview,
02:52he said he wanted to be the biggest band in the world.
02:54Where do you think that kind of bravado came from,
02:57from people of that generation?
03:01I don't know.
03:03I mean Glasgow's a very, I think it's a very artistic, creative city.
03:09I don't really know where that comes from,
03:11I don't know where that seam of creativity has grown from.
03:17But I think people just felt they were entitled to have a go at doing this
03:23and then they could pick up a guitar and get a sense.
03:26Also it was part of the times, I mean the ethos of the times was,
03:31I mean Axoff started really doing it I suppose in 1977, 77, 78,
03:36so that was just not post-punk, I mean that was kind of punk.
03:41Although I wasn't really punking myself.
03:45It was just that that's what you did, you could be in a band.
03:49If you had a guitar and you'd get a drummer, you could just have a go.
03:52And then you'd go and see, I mean I saw the Semple Mites in the Mars Bar,
03:56I was like, what?
03:58I was like, how could people from Glasgow do that?
04:01How could, well they can, you know, and they were amazing.
04:04And there was that squashed wee sweaty bar,
04:07and Jim was there with his pudding haircut,
04:11his Shakespearean haircut.
04:14And it was just great and I thought, well I want to be part of all this,
04:18this looks fun.
04:20But of course it's not, you know, you have to work hard.
04:23They worked incredibly hard.
04:25And you've got to get lucky as well.
04:27We worked, you know, we did our best but it never really happened for us.
04:31But I always maintained an interest in music.
04:34But we got kind of tired and punch drunk really from constantly trying
04:39and not really getting anywhere.
04:41Yeah, and then things like, you know, Local Hero kind of sets the scene
04:46for acting becoming the big focus.
04:49Did you still kind of carry around a guitar and stuff like that?
04:54Not really.
04:55I mean, first of all, I've never really been a guy,
04:57I'm not the guy with the guitar at a party, you know, I'm not that guy.
05:01I don't come and join in and get to sing songs.
05:04I've never been that guy.
05:07I think I just wanted to, Local Hero was such a great kind of,
05:18a great accident, a great piece of fate sort of plucking me out of,
05:25you know, hanging about the amphora or the Miles Bar
05:28or the College of Building Technology bar and going to this other world
05:35that I was also very, very interested in.
05:39I thought, well, I've got to go with this.
05:40So I didn't really, I stopped sort of pursuing actually being a signed up
05:49pop person.
05:50There were a few kind of residual things that happened.
05:57I was always sort of half in bands and half kind of,
06:02there's lots of recordings of bits and pieces and things that we did
06:06in various studios that never went anywhere.
06:10But I think my heart had gone out of it really.
06:13And I just wanted to get on with acting, which seemed strangely more,
06:19that was kind of happening for me, you know.