Bob Evans

Suburban Songbook is an album of songs about home by someone who spends a lot of time away from it. Mitchell admits to being unashamedly nostalgic, which is not surprising from someone who can sit in a pub with a beer in one hand, a steak sandwich in the other and say, without embarrassment or affectation, “I’m a big fan of romance.”

It’s a sentiment echoed in the track, Friend, a song carried by the open-hearted but all-too-rarely stated sentiment, `I believe in love’.

“There’s these universal truths that people won’t admit to or talk about,” Mitchell says, “but if you press them about it they’ll say `of course I want the world to live in peace and for there to be no wars and everyone to love each other’. You have to push people to open up about that sort of stuff but the vast majority of human beings all feel the same way about it.”

And there it is, the Hardline According To Kevin Mitchell. Well, actually, it’s the Hardline According To Bob Evans. Or is it?

“I’m not sure,” he says. “I think Bob Evans is more me than Kevin Mitchell from Jebediah is! In that way it’s like a reverse alter-ego. It just allows me to push things a bit. Bob’s been enough under the radar to give me, creatively, a lot more freedom than I might otherwise have.”