Indie pioneer with the effervescent Orange Juice, wrangler of words and caustic wit, he survived major-label meltdowns and near-fatal brain injury to rebuild himself as a songwriter. Amazingly, the fruits are still ripening. “The possibilities are endless!” insists Edwyn Collins.

Interview by ANDREW PERRY

Portrait by TOM OLDHAM

THE RESTORATION OF EDWYN COLLINS, TO borrow the title of his wife Grace Maxwell’s book about his convalescence, continues apace. After this beloved post-punk pioneer suffered two devastating cerebral haemorrhages in February 2005, a life of any sort seemed a very distant prospect.

And yet, almost two decades later, here we are in his north-west London living room, discussing his fourth new album since his return to music in 2007, and reflecting on his life’s work amid unremitting gales of laughter.

“Paul Cook said, ‘It was a great career move, having that stroke,’” says Collins as he takes a seat on the couch. “‘You’re more popular than you were before!’”

Cook, the Sex Pistols drummer, has been a regular in Collins’s band since the pair met in a mid-’90s line-up of Vic Godard’s Subway Sect. “All my friends are like that – naughty!” Collins roars.

The mirth continues as MOJO shows him our ticket from a solo Collins gig at the Kilburn National on December 3, 1987, which sparks memories of the pre-show scene backstage.

Collins was busily gelling his hair into a proud quiff, only for Maxwell – then as now, his manager and life partner – to inform him that the tub of goo in his hand was actually her hair removal cream.

“I designed that one, back in the day,” he says of another ticket stub, from the London Astoria on March 24, 1995, circa his shimmering retro-pop smash, A Girl Like You. Momentarily, he pauses to think, then beams triumphantly: “The font – Helvetica!”

A trivial detail, perhaps, but that word’s surfacing from Collins’s post-haemorrhage brain is the kind of minor miracle that his doctors had warned him might never occur. The cruellest aspect of Collins’s illness was that it attacked the verbal capacity of such a witty (and often withering) songsmith who, across a quarter-century of spiky, melody-rich records with Orange Juice and as a solo artist, revelled in unusual vocabulary.

Recorded in December 1979, Orange Juice’s debut 7-inch for Alan Horne’s Glasgow-based Postcard label, Falling And Laughing (note its fastidious use of the word “consequently”), was Collins’s knowing anthem of indie exuberance. But Horne, more eccentric aesthete than thrusting record mogul, soon ceded the band to major-league Polydor, where Collins (vocals/guitar), James Kirk (vocals/guitar), David McClymont (bass) and Steven Daly (drums) stepped up to create 1982’s classic You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever.

Under Collins’s restless leadership, the group shapeshifted through the same year’s more streamlined Rip It Up and more organic Texas Fever EP and The Orange Juice (both 1984) before being dropped by Polydor MD Malcolm Dunbar. As a solo artist, Collins’s quality was consistent – his sales less so, but since his stroke the fans have rallied. From 2014 on, he and Maxwell have spent the bulk of their time in Helmsdale, a village on the coast of the north-east Highlands, where he recorded Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation.

In conversation, the singer’s diction is still halting, and he takes some understandable short cuts (for instance, he often defaults to the present tense) but the new album finds his songwriting back to its articulate best. “I’m taking my time with the lyrics,” he admits. “The chorus is relatively easy. The verse is hard. You get me? I’m going, Come… on… Edwyn… think!”

Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation was written and recorded at your studio in Helmsdale. Do you have a daily regimen?