Blame it on the banjo. During lockdown, Graeme Black took up the instrument, grappled with the clawhammer playing style and then found his way back to the guitar he had laid down since leaving his previous band, State Broadcasters. New parenthood and anxieties around performing had kept him from music in the interim but now the songs began flowing once more and a new outfit, Upturned Boats, bobbed into view.

‘At first, there wasn’t really any thought behind it,’ says Black. ‘I was just trying to stave off the madness, but since I’ve started writing songs again they are just pouring out of me. The convention in rock music is that people are more prolific and write arguably their best music when they are younger. I would counter that I’m writing more than I ever did.’ As to the evocative name, Black says ‘I’ve always liked that imagery of a wooden rowing boat. There’s something ghostly but really appealing because they offer shelter.’

Although Upturned Boats is a vehicle for Black’s songs, he’s joined in the band by erstwhile State Broadcasters buddies Pete MacDonald on keys, Fergus MacDonald on guitar and Cameron Maxwell on bass, plus Roy Mohan on drums. ‘I’m making all the creative decisions,’ says Black, ‘which is quite weird for me because I don’t feel like a natural leader.’

‘It’s more of a dictatorship really,’ chips in Pete MacDonald, also a longtime member of Randolph’s Leap. Is it a benevolent dictatorship? ‘Very benevolent.’

For Black, the music marks a return to his first love of indie rock. ‘I’ve lived my entire adult life with The Wedding Present and I wanted to reflect those early influences, but my favourite band is Wilco and I really like Big Thief, so I wanted to try to knit those together. Pete and Fergus seem to be able to make sense of my incoherent ramblings about how I want the songs to sound.’

‘We like the idea of making something more chaotic sounding, something slightly discordant,’ adds MacDonald. ‘I always think of salt water and salt air which has a bitterness and harshness to it, and that feeds into the band name. It’s not comfortable but there is something reassuring in its harshness, so it’s placing something that has slightly pointed, sharp bits and rough edges within something warmer.’

‘You’re beginning to sound like me when I’m trying to describe what I think a lead guitar part should sound like,’ says Black. ‘“A crisp packet floating in the wind... ”’

There may be floating crisp packets to come, when the band record an album. For now, there’s both gentle desolation and hopeful encouragement in the six songs of Upturned Boats’ debut EP, from delicate post-rock lullabies ‘Car Park Sadness’ and ‘Please Don’t Go’ to warm wafts in ‘Flightless Bird’ and ‘About Love’, blending burnished guitars and chiming electro piano. No hint of clawhammer banjo though.

Upturned Boats release their debut EP digitally on Friday 7 March.