Considering he's been through a marriage breakup, travels these days without a label and has endured all the usual problems artists whose careers began in the early '70s – poor management, problematic recording contracts and a little too much indulgence in the fun things – Richard Clapton, or Ralph to his friends, kicks off his first album of new material in eight years with a remarkably optimistic little ditty titled Sunny Side Up. The more reflective, expansive – and personal – Vapour Trails follows, with its admission that “There's a fork in the road/And I don't know where to go/Maybe I never will”. Yet there is the confident hand of a master songsmith evident throughout the album, so Ralph has obviously found his way back to the right fork in that road, with a little help, he admits, from his guitarist, Danny Spencer, with whom he co-wrote three of the 11 songs on Harlequin Nights.

Blue Skies continues in the more contemplative vein – “I thought I had all the answers” – before Run Like A River pulls us back to the optimism that has pulled Clapton through to this point: “If your life's gettin' kinda misty/Gotta turn yourself around”. Then he gets down and dirty with Dancing With The Vampires. And so it goes, alternating between the contemplative and the celebratory, a survivor looking forward, not just looking back, keen to embrace what's to come, not merely wallow in what's been lost or might have been. After all, as he says in Over The Borderline, “I may be crazy but my heart is true”. And that's all anyone can ask of any artist.

You might need to have lived a little to really appreciate the deeper waters within but if you're prepared to come aboard, there's a lot to like about Ralph circa 2012.