The Zutons are back.

In so many ways they’ve never been away. Their song ‘Valerie’ has become a ubiquitous worldwide hit (with a little help from the late Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson), whilst sporadic reunion shows reminded everyone just what a potent live band they are. Now a stunning new album, made with super producers Nile Rodgers (David Bowie/Madonna/B-52’s/Chic/Daft Punk) and Ian Broudie (Echo and the Bunnymen/Lightning Seeds/The Coral) opens the long-awaited next chapter of their journey.

It’s not been an easy ride to get to ‘The Big Decider’, which will be released in April 2024. The relative success of ‘Valerie’ and the pressure that followed took its toll on the band. Dave McCabe struggled with, and eventually beat, a drink and drug addiction. Long-time companions Sean Payne (drums) and Abi Harding (saxophone) split for many years, with Payne spending time in Los Angeles and playing in the Jaded Hearts Club Band with members of Muse, Nine Inch Nails, Jet and Blur. The others released music under different guises – Harding with her solo project AbiChan and McCabe with his band Dave McCabe and The Ramifications.

But loss, love, lockdown and the realisation that they are much stronger together brought the band back to their Liverpool roots with a determination to take advantage of McCabe’s recovery and new fatherhood – and the prolific and brilliant songs that followed.

“I got sober while making this record, my dad died and I became a father, all in the space of a year. I had all that to deal with – but then everyone else had to deal with me whilst I was going through it. All of that went into the record, and that’s obviously one of the reasons why it took as long as it did. But I think that’s also why we love the record as much as we do, which is a first for this band – and maybe a first for any band in the history of pop music!” he adds, larkily.

As part of the whole band’s rehabilitation process, there was a short 2019 tour, a 15-year anniversary celebration of ‘Who Killed… The Zutons?’, their half-a-million-selling debut album. As they tweeted at the time announcing the tour, “We’ve all knocked our heads together and realised we love each other, and you lot too.”

“That was just to test the waters,” admits McCabe now. “And it was all good. But then obviously things have moved on since then. So, yeah, this album’s been a long time in the making, and I don’t know where the time’s gone. But I know that I’m here now.”

“Dave has been through an awful lot in the last few years,” says Harding, “and these things have obviously really impacted him. But his songwriting has only got better. Now he spends more time on his songs. He’s in touch with his own and others’ emotions, and that all goes into the songs. It has been so nice to watch him grow. I’m so proud of him.”

“To be honest we all went through a lot of emotional turmoil,” adds Payne, who lived in Los Angeles for many of those “missing” years. In 2016, the band lost a close friend, the musician and actor Kristian Ealey – and, in fact, reunited for a one-off show in his honour, although that was billed as “probably… the last ever Zutons show”. But as Payne says now: “We had a realisation when we got the original line-up together to play that tribute show: there was still love between us. And that we were actually a really good live band.”

But then, over the next two years, both Payne’s parents passed. “I was lost at that point,” he admits, “and Dave and Abi were really there for me. I moved in with Dave and we started writing some songs and he started talking about going to rehab, which was a huge step for him to take.”

The process of a comeback was afoot. Then, in 2020 the pandemic arguably helped fast-track that process. As McCabe characterises that time, shortly before he went into rehab: “We were all living together in our own little bubble, plenty of booze and mushrooms and a lot of bonding! It was necessary.”

“At the start of lockdown, I was living on my own,” says Harding “so I decided to buy a blow-up bed and move in with Dave and Sean as I didn’t want to be alone.” In the ensuing year the trio had what she describes as “a lot of fun”, making good use of a domestic studio set-up they christened The Grotto.

It was a precious period of getting the band back together: physically, mentally and emotionally. As Payne describes it, “We just hung out and got silly and had a laugh as much as we could.”

“Whenever any of us wanted to record, we could do so straight away,” says Harding of a three-way collaborative creative process that was as free-flowing as it was honest and rigorous. “Sometimes Sean would be recording me while Dave would be writing somewhere else in the house. Or me and Dave would be working out harmonies and singing together while Sean would be working on a track. We could do whatever we wanted, there was no time restrictions.”

“We worked out a way of co-writing lyrics,” explains Payne, “where I’d leave out what I’d written on the kitchen table for Dave to read. He’d cross stuff out and replace it. Then I’d see what he’d written. It’s hard sometimes when you have to say ‘I don’t like that’ or ‘what about this?’ when writing lyrics. So this was a way of letting each of us say what we thought without having to look at each other for a reaction, or getting offended when one of us pulled a face at something the other had written.”

From the good-vibes spirit of The Zutons’ communal “safe space” emerged ‘Creeping on The Dancefloor’. Blessed with a monster riff and an infectious, dancefloor-igniting boogie-beat, it was always a shoo-in for the first single.

Payne: “One morning Dave and me were messing about and the riff popped out. For a bit of a laugh I copied Dave on the drums with a daft beat. He said, ‘that’s boss, I’ve got something for this’, went out for a walk and came back with the main outline for the song. We kept working it out and then recorded a version which we really loved and got us all excited.”

McCabe: “Because we were all trapped in the house and I was singing it onto my phone, just the melody and some of the words to keep the noise down, when we got let loose and recorded it with the band, it had a great energy. It’s one of those songs you want to hear again as soon as it’s finished. That’s always a good sign.”

The slick funk gallop of ‘Water’ is another belter, and another lockdown win.

“The evolution of that song was quite extensive,” recalls Harding of a song on which she and McCabe’s voices work in perfect harmony, “maybe over a year. I love the groove, the lyrics and the way it makes me feel. Dave wrote the verse lyrics when we were all living together, and I remember when him and Sean got the groove for the first demo of it – that felt really exciting. Sean then wrote the chorus about a year later, and that made it feel really positive.”

Emerging from lockdown, The Zutons spent five weeks in Abbey Road with Nile Rodgers. His input was a boon to the band, not least on the track Disappear. Sitting purposefully in the middle of the album, it’s the album’s longest track, a wiggy/psych/pastoral interlude blessed with gorgeous sax from Harding, an anchoring piece at the heart of ‘The Big Decider’.

“Working with Nile Rodgers was just an amazing experience,” says McCabe “he gave me a confidence that I’ve never felt before making a record. He’s very laid-back as a person, and a good listener. For the end of Disappear, I wrote a spoken word piece about The Zutons travelling the stars and galaxies and asking the most powerful question in the universe: ‘Why?’

“I asked Nile if he’d read it out over the top of the end section of the song, thinking he’d just say no. But he jumped in the vocal booth, with his chain around his neck and his sunglasses on, and did about 20 different takes, all in different styles of himself. It was mind-blowing! It was as though he really does travel around the universe in some spaceship and just makes music in his spare time. He’s just one of the coolest people I’ve ever met.”

Also falling into that category is old friend of the band and Liverpool-scene ledge Ian Broudie, producer of their first album.

“It was great to reconnect with Ian,” beams McCabe. The producer was sold on reuniting with his old charges when he heard the first version of what would become the album’s title track. “Ian told me the demo of The Big Decider brought a tear to his eye and that’s why he said yes to working with us again. It was one of the first songs we wrote for the album,” the frontman says of an irresistible blast of a song with both a positive bounce and a lyric that speaks truthfully to The Zutons’ long road to getting the band, and the vibe, in the groove again. Little wonder that, for McCabe, “getting that reaction from Ian made me feel like we were doing something right – that the song spoke for itself.”

We can say as much for The Zutons’ fourth album: a tight, taut, fat-free, nine-track record that is its own best ambassador. Genuinely long-anticipated, authentically hard-won, scorchingly self-aware and truly worth the wait, The Big Decider is the sound of a band channelling what Abi Harding describes as a lifetime of “great chemistry and great connection”.

Or, as Sean Payne puts it: “We had a genuine feeling of a shared vision. In the past we haven’t really said how we feel, or we’ve taken each other the wrong way. But this album was different. We really didn’t feel good until it was just how we wanted it.”

The last word goes to the album’s last song, a feelgood singalong that already feels like it’ll be a monster live when reborn, rebooted, rejuvenated Zutons start touring next year.

“I actually wrote Best Of Me in rehab,” says Dave McCabe, “and it’s one of my favourite songs on the album. I suppose it’s about feeling good and healing yourself after you’ve taken some long-standing damage. But again, it’s like all the songs on the record: it’s meant to be uplifting.”

They are The Zutons, they are back, and they’re here to uplift your 2024.