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“I used to have this theory that someone else called The Bloke use to come around and call on me,” explains Nick Lowe about his song writing when we meet by phone to talk about his latest album, The Old Magic.

“You don’t know when this person is going to turn up and show you these songs,” he continues, “and they don’t come for months and months and you can’t get in contact with them. You’ve heard them doing their songs many times that you can do an impersonation but it’s never quite as good as when they do it.”

“Are you following me or do you think it’s a load of complete nonsense?” he laughs.

Yes, it makes perfect sense and perhaps this is why names such as Mel Tormé (the Golden Fog), Nat King Cole and Rick Nelson spring to mind when listening to The Old Magic, a collection of mainly ballads from the old school. Perceptive and melancholy lyrics tied to lovely melodies. Match that to some gently imploring vocals that are right out in front of a quiet ensemble and you have an album that Frank Sinatra would have been proud to release. It is almost as if the songs have been recently discovered in a time capsule.

“Well, that’s fantastic, I’m extremely flattered,” exclaims Lowe when I mention some of the names conjured up by his songs. “I think you must have a better CD than me because that’s extremely flattering - although I’m a fan of all of those artists but I would never claim to get even close, certainly to the first two.”

“Somebody else has pointed out they can hear much more of an influence from a pre-rock ‘n’ roll style on this record,” he adds. “So a song like ‘I Read A Lot’ is in quite an old-fashioned style: it could have been written in the ‘40s or ‘50s.”

Picture a late night in front of an open fire with a fine glass of wine and a loved one. Pop The Old Magic onto the turntable and romance is sure to follow. It’s that sort of album. (I have not tried this myself but I am sure it would work for you).

Nearly 35 years since his debut solo album Lowe has gone from being the Jesus Of Cool to that of the Master of Melancholy. Not that this ‘old-fashioned’ style is a new approach for Lowe, who has been heading in this direction ever since The Impossible Bird in 1994 (is it really that long ago?).

You could hear the shift in emphasis on songs such as ‘Soulful Wind,’ ‘The Beast In Me’ (also done by Johnny Cash), ‘Where’s My Everything?’ ‘I Live On A Battlefield’ and his cover of ‘True Love Travels On A Gravel Road’ (also covered by Elvis Presley).

That album teamed him with multi-instrumentalist Geraint Watkins and drummer Bobby Irwin. They toured Australia with him back then and have been with him (along with guitarist Steve Donnelly) ever since.

The Old Magic is yet another batch of gorgeous songs that add to Lowe’s credentials as a master song craftsman – with the same team plus guests including Jimmie Vaughan and Ron Sexsmith. Lowe is able to take a simple ideas or emotions (loneliness, wanderlust, melancholy, remorse and even love) and expand them into attractive vignettes, with only one song over four minutes and most under three and a half.

It really is a writing master class – and Lowe will be bringing some members of the studio ensemble to Australia when he tours here early next year.

“The last time I came out was with just Geraint and Bobby,” recalls Lowe. “We had this sort of trio thing that we did and it wasn’t for the fainthearted, I think. It didn’t work all the time but we were trying to do something that sort of worked. We did two nights at a club in Melbourne - I can’t remember what the name of it was.

“It was the Continental Café,” I interject, recalling that the trio format worked so well that at the time I wondered why you would ever need more musicians in band.

“That’s absolutely it,” says Lowe.  “We did a couple of nights there and it worked pretty good but then we took it to Sydney and played this real rock club, real heavy metal kind of club and it was hopeless.”

“It was a bit hit and miss but it was the sort of genesis of what I’m doing now,” continues Lowe, “because now it’s much more of a band but we still don’t play loud and it’s very approachable. They’re very good musicians indeed and we can play all types of different styles of music and tackle some quite unusual selections from my back catalogue. People seem to really enjoy it so looking forward to coming down there and for people to see it.”

Lowe will have the opportunity to create some of the ‘old magic’ on stage here with his own outfit for the first time in more than a dozen years.

“I don’t know about in Oz but over here people talk about the old magic,” he says of the album’s title. “Like if a marriage is going a bit wrong, well you need to rekindle the old magic - or a sports commentator says, if they’ve got some old player out of retirement, ‘there’s a full capacity crowd waiting to see if Smithers can display some of the old magic for the crowd.’ So it’s sort of a jokey expression.”

I mention that, for someone who seems to be a very happy person, Lowe writes some heart-rending ballads.

“Yes, I suppose so,” he agrees, “but I’m not one of those writers who sets his diary to music. I’m really kind of an old fashioned hack really and - although I know what I’m talking about, I know what it’s like to have your heart broken and to be lonely or to do some really bad stuff and feel guilty about it all these simple human foibles  - I tend to make up characters and have them say it’s them who did it. It’s not really me in the character in the songs but I do know what I’m talking about.

“The other thing is that as you get older it sort of cheers you up to sing that sort of stuff and it’s very interesting. I like writing songs about hapless characters and I identify with them and feel quite an affection for them really.”

The other characteristic of Lowe’s albums over the past decade has been the stunningly warm sound that he has managed to capture in the studio – so realistic that when you put the discs on it sounds as if he is almost in the room with you. It is a technique often eschewed these days by producers who want to make loud records with lots of instruments and reverb that jump out of a radio and hit you over the head. Lowe’s approach is to go for the intimate, late night listening ambience. It works brilliantly.

“I must say we take a lot of trouble to get the records to sound the way they do,” he says, “and in order to do that we have to use a real studio and proper musicians all playing away - which is incredibly expensive to do. You’d think it’s a walk in the park but it’s not.

“That is the reason I don’t think I will ever become a mainstream artist because most of the public when they hear a record like mine go on, right from the start, it makes them nervous. People are very conditioned to hear pop music that is flawless, that is metronomic with a lot of synthesised sounds. So they know as soon as they hear the record starts there are going to be no flaws in it at all, there’s going to be no accidents or anything that’s going to upset it unless by design. Whereas my stuff has got a sort of homemade quality about it I think: you can hear that human beings have been at work. Some people find that a delightful and refreshing change but most people don’t, it makes them nervous, it spooks them and I’m afraid it’s too bad.

“I’m not saying that a lot of pop music - in the way that I describe the metronomics - that there haven’t been some fantastic records made like that - there have. So I don’t want to sound like some Luddite just shouting or whatever they did in the early days, Bring back wax cylinders! But the more modern way of making records just doesn’t suit me. I do it my way and I’m afraid that’s the way it’s got to be because that’s the way I like to hear it. But it’s going to keep me second division, top of the third bottom of the second.”

“There have been some good teams in the second division, haven’t there?” I ask. “Possibly some of our favourite teams have come from the second division, haven’t they? And unsullied by too much success.”

“Yes I agree with that,” laughs Lowe. “I’m always trying to expand my audience I really do and in fact that’s what I’ve been attempting to do for the last twenty years.”

“When what I describe as my brief career as a pop star ended in the early ‘80s,” he continues, “I’d done pretty well. I’d had three or four years which is better then a lot of people because, unless you’re very unusual like Elton John or Cliff Richard or Neil Diamond whose careers sort of power on through the decades, most people don’t have that. They get a little break maybe, they’ll end up with a little flat or an apartment and then they’re back into obscurity again.

“I’d done better than most really but it definitely did come to an end. I hadn’t finished yet; I felt like I barely even started. I felt like I’d ticked a couple of boxes: I’ve been in the charts, tick. I realised that it wasn’t going to be easy.

“I was going to have to figure out a new way of writing or recording for myself so I could use the fact I was getting older as an actual asset rather than hide and be embarrassed about it and be forever condemned to just relive the period of your success when you were on the telly all the time - so your audience can relive their youth through you.

“I thought if I can do something which is hip enough - it won’t be for everybody and I know that - that youngsters will dig it as well as whoever of my audience who stayed around will like as well then I’ll be winning. So I put a lot of thought into it and I can see signs that it’s starting to work now at my shows. Now I’ve got quite a interesting audience and each one of my records has sold a little bit more but Beyoncé doesn’t have to worry, I don’t think I’m going to knock her off the charts yet.”

Lowe’s desire to reach a younger audience has paid dividends in the USA where is opening nine shows for Wilco on the first leg of their Whole Love Tour in the latter part of the year.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” he admitted. “I’ve got a feeling that if all goes well their audience could be my audience too but they just don’t know it yet. So I’m really hoping that I do well on this tour and I manage to make some new friends and it could be just the job for me.”

When I mention that Wilco have done a cover of Lowe’s ‘I Love My Label’ he immediately says, “It is much better then the original.”

It is a typically self-deprecating remark from a singer songwriter who has demonstrated how to grow old in the music business gracefully, graciously – and how to keep making great recordings.

The Old Magic is out now through Shock. Nick Lowe and band tour Australia in March 2012.