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All of which means that there’s a certain amount of pressure attached to the release of her second solo outing, Bloom, though speaking to her, you wouldn’t know it, as she’s brimming over with the simple relief of having finished the project.

"I am very happy with it. It’s weird because you get so close to something when you’re recording and writing it, you can’t be objective.

Lou Rhodes

"So when you’re finished and you have a listen back to a body of work, you start to detach for the first time and think ‘right, that’s what happened. It’s interesting."

Organic music

That creative process is something that she finds she’s often asked about. She says she’s not alone in having such an “organic” approach, though it’s only because of a recent article that she’s been able to confirm that theory.

"I’ve never been one of these songwriters who can take up a pen, sit down and write a song. I was reading a piece in a magazine about how other songwriters do it and there’s such a spread of approaches.

"I found that I come down on the side of someone like Devendra Banhart who said that your songs come when you least expect them to come. That’s exactly how I am. For instance, I was walking back across the fields from taking my kids to school and started writing a song.

Lou Rhodes

"For me, the creative process is never really a conscious thing. It doesn’t really live in my mind. It’s more of a case of heart and guts. It does its own thing when it flows out."

Such an approach leads to many ideas falling into the mix. In fact, there’s even a rumour that lead single The Rain is inspired by no less than the mighty Led Zeppelin. Lou, though, says that’s not quite the truth.

"The song’s not influenced by Zeppelin, but the drums are. John Bonham used to have a way of micing up his kit that got the most amazing sound, so we miced ours up in a similar way.

"With both this album and Beloved One, we’ve been going back to basics in the way we recorded stuff. So much music is over-processed with everything added on. We’ve been all about creating the atmosphere in the studio so that you don’t have to add things on, recording songs as a performance so it’s not reliant on loops and samples."

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