Like a pulp-fiction auteur, Barry Adamson has been laying bare his soundtrack-inspired brand of after-hours sleazy listening for more than three decades now. With a back-story that had him come crawling out of punky, funky Manchester as bassist with divine fabulists Magazine before taking things to extremes with Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Adamson has long left those old gangs behind. Stepping out of the shadows, he has become a maverick loner and one-man nouveau rat pack with ever-expanding widescreen ambitions, remaking and remodelling classic soul-funk big-band bump and grind in his own retro-cool image.

So it goes with Cut To Black, Adamson’s tenth solo affair, and his first since the publication of Up Above The City, Down Beneath The Stars, the opening part of his memoirs. This is also a first outing since his soundtrack to the documentary, Scala!!!, which tells the story of London’s ultimate outsider cinema. In a parallel universe, such a long-lost emporium of larger-than-life, after-hours dreams would be screening the big pictures dreamed up by Adamson for ten short stories disguised as show tunes that make up his new record.

Things kick into life with the horn-laden bounce of first single and album trailer, ‘The Last Words Of Sam Cooke’, a first-person reimagining of the true story that led to that 1960s soul legend’s untimely demise. This sets the tone for a decade-hopping stew of noirish narratives, from the 1950s B-movie clip-joint thrust of ‘Demon Lover’ and the gospel chorales of ‘These Would Be Blues’ to Blonde On Blonde-era Dylan for ‘One Last Midnight’. There’s a Tom Waits-ish routine on ‘Amen White Jesus’ while the title track possesses the panoramic big-beat bravura of Serge Gainsbourg.

Despite its pick-and-mix reference points and stylistic trappings, Adamson makes all this his own on a giddily upbeat set awash with Runyonesque wordplay illustrating a clutch of immaculately turned-out private investigations. Only when ‘Was It A Dream?’ ends with a jolt does reality bite beyond the pocket-sized confessionals.

For his final-reel epilogue, ‘Waiting For The End of Time’ opens with the sound of a wind so desolate you can all but imagine the breezeblock wasteland Adamson wanders through en route to enlightenment. As he comes in from the cold for some serious ruminations on life, death and the whole darn shooting match, and as piano flourishes cascade over the song’s funereal rhythms, pop philosophy has rarely sounded so hard-boiled. As our hero wanders off into the night, only the cliffhanger promise of a sequel awaits.

Cut To Black is released by Barry Adamson Incorporated on Friday 17 May; Barry Adamson is on tour Wednesday 22 May–Saturday 1 June; main picture: Brian David Stevens.