Philip Selway releases Weatherhouse, a month into the Radiohead sessions

Philip Selway's second solo album, Weatherhouse, came out in Britain on Monday on Bella Union, and in the United States a day later; Australia had it on 3 October. It arrived with Radiohead a month into work on new material, and Selway tells Nick Duerden of The Independent how the first days back together felt.

We had the inevitable first-day-back-at-school nerves initially, and so right now we are just getting used to being around each other again

Philip Selway¹

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Asked how the sessions are going, he says only that it is early days. Selway's own touring of Weatherhouse waits until early 2015 because of Radiohead's recording schedule, and four British dates for February were announced last month.

Dates

Weatherhouse follows Familial, his first album, from 2010. He made it with Adem Ilhan and Quinta, who had both played in his touring band, mostly at Radiohead's studio in Oxfordshire.

Anyone reading the lyrics, he says, could think him more troubled than he is. Asked whether the bleaker songs are about his marriage or the band, he calls it a fair question; they come from past relationships, possibly work, and general observation, at a remove from his day-to-day life. “Ghosts” is about the night terrors he had in 2013, brought on by a breathing problem that was worse at night.

For 20 years he worked with the Samaritans, 17 of them as a listening volunteer and three as an ambassador, and he kept it up all through Radiohead's rise; he says he needed it for his own sanity. He did not ask the others for advice on the record.

Advice, no, but approval, certainly. You can't help but want approval.

Philip Selway¹

Being in Radiohead is stretching and at times intense, he says, and the bar has to be high. Our last tour was hugely joyful.¹