Paul Heaton’s 23rd Album Lands in August

Four decades on from the Housemartins’ first record, Paul Heaton is still writing at a steady clip. His 23rd album, ‘Jenius’, comes out on August 21st. The number alone is disorienting, a reminder that Heaton’s output has rarely paused, even when the spotlight moved elsewhere.

He made this one with Ian Broudie, the Lightning Seeds frontman and producer, at Blueprint Studios in Manchester. Fifteen new songs fill the tracklist, including the current single ‘Favourite Kind Of Idiot’. The title’s spelling comes from an old Heaton quip. “If anybody ever calls me a genius,” he says, “I always say, ‘What?! With a J?!’ The spelling would obviously be wrong.”

The record follows a period where younger audiences have been finding his work. A late-career swell that feels more organic than manufactured. The tour behind ‘Jenius’ hits UK arenas this autumn, wrapping at