'I cry properly at least once a day' - Clare Grogan on the emotional return of Altered Images

On stage, her band, Altered Images – 80s pop outfit known for a trio of tremendous albums and a handful of top 10 hits, most famously Happy Birthday - is bouncy, bold, loud and lively.

How is she feeling about the intimate, acoustic set-up of her next gig in the Strathaven Hotel tomorrow night?

“Yeah, I won’t be doing intimate and acoustic,” she laughs down the telephone line from her home in London.

“I just CAN’T do intimate and acoustic. I’m far too raucous for that.

“Doesn’t really matter if it’s a big venue or a small one, for me, it’s all about a big and bold performance. The circus really comes to town.”

The Strathaven Hotel gig is part of the Frets Concerts series, which brings big-name, mainly-but-not-exclusively Scottish acts off-the-beaten track to perform in a laid-back setting. Lloyd Cole, James Grant, The Bluebells and Hipsway are just some of the acts who have appeared so far.

The up-close-and-personal nature of it all DOES appeal to Clare, however.

READ MORE: From Altered Images to Lloyd Cole - the unusual venue hosting top Scottish bands of the 80s and 90s

“Oh, I love a bit of heckling,” she says, with relish. “Me or the audience? A bit of both. I’m just really looking forward to it - there has been so much chopping and changing over the last few months, and such a lack of opportunities to properly get together with the band, it’s really nice to be doing this at last.”

Clare is also preparing for the release of Altered Images’ first new record in 38 years.

Mascara Streakz will be released on Cooking Vinyl - who also manage The Fratellis, Nina Nesbitt, The Darkness and more – in the summer.

“I feel, really, so genuinely overwhelmed,” says Clare. “It’s my first album in almost four decades. That’s no small thing. It’s exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.”

She explains: “I’d been doing some live shows, and people kept saying, ‘why don’t you make some new music?’ and I kept thinking, yes, I really should get round to doing that, but never did.

“And then during lockdown – the second one, not the first one, during the first lockdown like everyone else I watched Netflix and ate chocolate and did very little – during the second lockdown I just thought I cannot go back there.

“I have to do something, I have to use the time better. I had some room in my head, so I started writing.”

It helped, she adds with a laugh, “living with the excellent record producer Stephen Lironi.”

Clare and Stephen, also an original member of Altered Images, are now married, with a daughter Elle.

Clare explains: “We did the bulk of it just the two of us, then Robert (Hodgens, aka Bobby Bluebell) got involved and then Bernard Butler, formerly of Suede, who is my neighbour , also got involved and it all just came together in quite an organic way.

“I tend to write quite quickly. But that’s not to say it was rushed, a lot of hard work and care went into it.”

She pauses.

“And I’m really, really proud of it, it’s a labour of love,” she adds. “And now that it is finally being released and it’s real, that is quite terrifying.”

The album name is a reference to Clare herself, she laughs.

“I’m a notorious crier,” she admits. “My friends and family all know it – they’ll just roll their eyes and say, oh, she’s off again, when I start. I definitely cry properly at least once a day. It is not always negative though, sometimes I cry when I’m happy. Or I hear someone telling a powerful story on the radio.”

She grins: “So I do walk about with mascara smudges on my face all the time.”

The album, which Clare says has ‘a taste of very early Altered Images’, was inspired in part by the music she was listening to when she was 16.

“I’d been thinking about it a lot in lockdown, about my daughter Elle and all of us living in a much more, eh, intense, fashion that we would normally be,” smiles Clare. “It made me think about what it was like to be a teenager, how passionate you are about things, how black and white everything seems to be.

“It was quite emotional. When you’re young, certain bands mean EVERYTHING to you. I loved Simple Minds…the Human League, the Tom Tom Club, lots of electro pop. I was an absolutely crazy music nut, surrounded by other crazy music nuts, and we all just found each other, somehow.

“You find your tribe, don’t you? I think a lot of people will relate to that.”

After Strathaven tomorrow night (tickets are sold out, but check the Frets Concerts Facebook page for cancellations) Altered Images have a string of gigs planned down south, and the album is out in August.

“I’ve worked on many different things, in this business, over the years – but doing something that’s come from me, that I have created…I haven’t done that for a long time,” says Clare. “And it’s really, really great.”