Grant Nicholas has no intention of calling it a day with Feeder – but the Welshman has decided it’s time to go it alone.

His debut solo album, Yorktown Heights, shows a different side to his songwriting as he trades rock anthems such as Buck Rodgers and cult favourites such as High for a collection of acoustic-driven mellow numbers.

The title comes from the remote town in New York State where he decamped to write and record.

“It’s about an hour north of Manhattan but it feels like you are in Canada,” Nicholas explains ahead of his debut solo tour, on which he will be backed by a live band.

“It’s very remote and beautiful. It feels a bit hillbilly, redneck and that had an influence.

“I wanted the whole record to have a 1970s flashback thing going on. It was where my head was at. So everything – from the way I sequenced the album to the artwork, the logo and the fonts – reflects that.”

It might shock a few Feeder die-hards that Nicholas has always listened to classic songwriters.

He loves Fleetwood Mac, Simon and Garfunkel, Nick Drake, Neil Young and Cat Stevens.

But bands don’t sell more than three million albums and receive eight gold and platinum albums if the main songwriter can’t pen a hook.

“I listen to that stuff all the time,” he continues, adding that records by his heroes from the 1970s were on the stereo while he put Yorktown Heights together.

“People don’t make stuff like that anymore. They are just brilliant records.

“But I don’t think the music on my album sounds that retro. It’s more the sonics of it.

“I went out to LA to master it with this amazing guy who is well known for making stuff fat and warm and I wanted that.

“Whereas with Feeder I get the pumping, American thing going on, Yorktown Heights was a whole different thing.

“This was about having the songs there and not too in your face, and having a big vocal up front.”

The tracks reflect Nicholas’ life stage. And because they are personal they might not sit naturally on a Feeder record.

Father To Son is about his relationship with his son Ko Marley. Time Stood Still, its stadium-sized vision and simplicity with only a few lyrics, is influenced by Tom Petty.

“It is flashbacks really to someone who has been on holiday and met this person and thinking what could have been. It’s based on something which happened in my life and it touches on a romance.

“I’ve been very lucky for 20 years being able to make a living about being in a band. And it was almost thinking my life could have been so different if I had settled down with this person. I could be living in South Wales, playing in a covers band, doing a job I didn’t really like.”

Hitori, with its melancholic lyrics, lyrics including “sorrow will find me everywhere I go”, muses on life, loneliness and relationships.

“It’s a combination of my own feelings and what my friends are going through – losing parents, divorces,” he explains.

“I am an old school songwriter who sits down with a guitar and works. I’m not trying to hide that. I’m purely writing songs from the heart.”