“See the family, play the shows, and get out of there.”
That’s the sum total of Kyle Falconer’s plans when he visits his hometown of Dundee this month.
Oh, and “try and not party too much”.
This cannot be the same Kyle Falconer who was systematically banned from every pub in Dundee, except the one gay bar in which he met the love of his life, Laura, many moons ago?
It sounds like the incorrigible 37-year-old is really making a go of growing up, as he settles into life in Spain after leaving Broughty Ferry last year to travel with his family in a camper van.
“It’s all good man,” Kyle says cheerfully. “We’ve just been down the beach, the kids (Wylde, Winnie and Jet) are all away down at their new school here.”
It seems that home-schooling, which Kyle and Laura took on when they set off in the van in 2024, was a temporary move.
“My oldest daughter Wylde has started singing songs in Spanish,” he continues proudly. “She started singing Moana songs, and we thought she was just saying gibberish.
“But our friend down the road said she was speaking perfect Spanish. We were shocked!
“And we’re about to move into a new house in a couple of weeks, so it’s all class.”
New wife Laura is keeping Kyle right
The View frontman’s telling me all this from the car.
As with all his interviews, his wife Laura Falconer sits beside him, “making sure I dinna talk shite”.
To be loved is to be known, as the saying goes.
The pair eventually tied the knot last October in a Halloween-themed ceremony in Leith, after a decade-long engagement.
“It was the best day ever man,” Kyle, 37, tells me. “Absolutely class.”
But in true rock ‘n’ roll style, Kyle missed his own wedding – the first time around.
He and Laura had plans to celebrate their nuptials in Las Vegas, where Line of Duty star Martin Compston had organised a party to end all parties.
But after leaving it too late to apply for a US visa, Kyle wasn’t able to attend – leaving pal Compston waiting at the altar for the second time, after he failed to show up to the actor’s own wedding in 2016.
So a Leith wedding it was. The horror-movie-mad couple went all-out, with a fancy dress wedding at the Old Dr Bells Baths, a Victorian listed building which once housed a swimming pool.
And since becoming a husband, it’s been a steady rise for Kyle on all fronts.
‘Loads of songs with girls’ names’
Shortly after the wedding, he scooped the King Tuts’ Songwriting Award at the Scottish Music Awards.
Then it was back home to La Sierra Casa, the musician’s songwriting camp in El Xinorlet, where Kyle’s been busy preparing for the Australian launch of smash-hit play No Love Songs – an intimate portrait of his and Laura’s struggles through postnatal depression.
And with baby number 4 on the way, it’s a “mad” time for the Falconers.
So just to keep things interesting, Kyle’s also decided to launch his third solo studio album.
The One I Love Most, a romantic release for Valentine’s Day, is a compendium of all of Kyle’s songs which are titled with women’s names, stripped back to their acoustic origins.
‘Claudia’ was a real bitch
The sheer number of names in his songs has been the source of a running joke between himself and Laura for years; in fact, it was Laura who pointed out the pattern.
(She never had one with her name in it until 2021, when he released the cheekily-titled No Love Songs For Laura.)
But it was Kyle’s sister who encouraged him to use “girls’ names” in the first place, after he wrote a song inspired by her dog: Claudia.
“We used to mind my sister’s dog all the time and she hated me. I was the one person in the family she used to growl at all the time,” laughs Kyle. “I was always just wanting a cuddle!
“So that was how the song Claudia came about, and when I wrote it, my sister was like: ‘You should always use girls’ names because that’s what the Beatles do. And there’s a million girls for every name’.
“Like with [‘Which Bitch?’ track] 5Rebbeccas – my niece was called Rebecca, and my history teacher at school, Becky Hall, was obviously called Rebecca.
“At the time, I thought that was dead weird because Miss Hall was quite posh.
“And then my niece was also Becky. I knew loads of girls called Rebecca and they were all different, and so the name seemed versatile because it was different on all of them.
“Also,” he clarifies, “There wasn’t a Rebecca I knew that had a drug problem. I just had a sticker that said ‘solvent abuse can kill’ and thought I’d put that in the song.
“But yeah, I always used to just grab a name and start writing with it.”
Where did ‘Lily Anne’ song title come from?
Like Claudia and 5Rebbeccas, Kyle’s song Lily Anne has an unexpected origin.
Rather than being inspired by a woman (or a dog), it takes its name from a place – Los Angeles.
The lyrical love letter to ‘Lily Anne’ is really a love letter to LA, written when Kyle got the news he’d be allowed to stay Stateside back in the day.
And ‘Grace‘, Kyle’s latest reworked single, was inspired by The View bandmate Pete Reilly’s troublesome upstairs neighbours “years and years ago”.
For Kyle, revisiting some of these older songs with some years under his belt and perspective gained has been an eye-opening experience.
For example, The View’s track Penny, from the band’s 2015 release Ropewalk, which Kyle admits “didn’t make any sense” lyrically.
“I didn’t even know what I was talking about, it was fuelled on whatever,” says Kyle candidly. “But it’s been cool to go back and listen to the lyrics and realise that oh, that was quite profound.
“If that was another artist writing that, I’d think it was really good, man.”
Studio squabbles for next generation
His self-effacing nature aside, it’s clear that songwriting is the fuel of the Falconer engine.
As well as the thriving La Sierra Casa camp, which is set to host guests like Justin Hawkins (The Darkness) and Liverpudlian rising star Jamie Webster, Kyle’s got his own brood hooked on making tunes.
“Both my daughters, Wylde and Winnie, are always going down to the studio now that it’s all finished,” he says. “I’ve even had my wee boy, Jet, down there.
“He’s been getting pissed off at Winnie trying to tell him how to sing. He says: ‘Naw Winnie, this is how I’m doing it!'”
Spoken like a true Falconer.
Kyle Falconer plays HMV Dundee on February 7, then HMV Stirling and HMV Dunfermline on February 8. He returns to Dundee to play a solo show at Church on March 9, and will play The Windsor, Kirkcaldy on March 20. All dates here.
Conversation