Hue and Cry are performing live at the Beacon Arts Centre on Sunday and gave the Largs and Millport News an exclusive interview before their big concert.

The show is to promote their new album 'Pocketful of Stones' which is very much a coming of age for the pop duo with even Pat Kane's daughter Eleanor performing on one of the songs 'Let Her Go'.

Pat said: "It is an album made by two men who are acutely aware of the years passing. My brother Greg has a four year old, who was born at the beginning of the process of this album, and my daughter Eleanor, is in the last year of a stage school. It was a total delight and she is a wonderful talent and an amazing singer.

"I remember too that we were doing a gig on the Renfrew ferry the day after my first daughter was born in the 1980s. The aim of the album is to capture the moment in verse.

The opening song of the new album 'It Happened Here' is a punchy number which has some very distinctive sounds, and Pat reveals that it very much sets the tone for the whole album: "I like to write observational lyrics. There is a sense that time is moving very quickly and there is so much happening at the moment in relation to history, politics, and developments. We took the song on tour with us throughout the UK, played it on the day before and after Brexit, and 20 miles away on the day from where Jo Cox was killed. There are clear metaphors in the lyrics that the pressure of history is on your back, and wanting to be completely engaged in the times. The title track includes the lyrics 'Realise that time is ticking through your bones, One by one you throw away, Your pocketful of stones.'

The nostalgic mood for the 1980s has resulted in Hue and Cry performing at a number of gigs and events in celebration of the era, and Pat said he was proud to be part of a great generation of bands that hailed from Scotland.

Pat said that he was looking forward to the Greenock gig, and recalls performing at Lounge in Largs in 2006, and said that concerts these days were 'communal memory experiences', meeting fans after the concert and sharing memories of the 1980s.

As well as performing many of their classic numbers including 'Looking for Linda' and 'Labour of Love', fans can expect some surprise influences including Frank Sinatra, with Pat saying: "It's about what kind of musical landscape a young Frank Sinatra as a muse, with Pat explaining 'It's about what kind of musical landscape a young Frank Sinatra, operating in 2017, would drape around his voice and his song. Yes, he'd use strings - but maybe also sound loops, synth washes, and odd grooves.'

Remarkably Hue and Cry were once offered the chance to support Sinatra during an Ibrox concert in the 1980s, but Pat opted to go along to see the singing legend in the flesh as a concert-goer with his father. As Sinatra belongs to a classic era, it perhaps brings it home even more the sense that the clock is ticking, and the love of music and the arts has been passed down another generation to daughter Eleanor.

For tickets, go to beaconartscentre.co.uk/events/hue-cry-plus-special-guests/