The Skids celebrate birthday milestone at Glasgow's O2 ABC

Richard Jobson and company have worked on Burning Cities, their first album since Joy was released in 1981.

They will perform some of the new songs at a sold out O2 ABC this Saturday, but it was a call from super producer Youth, who’s worked on tracks by the likes of Guns N’ Roses, the Verve and the Jesus and Mary Chain over the years, that kick-started new material.

“It transpired that he was a huge Skids fan and wanted to do a few songs,” says Richard.

“I told the guys and we thought we should just write songs and see what happened. If it didn’t work then no-one would know, but if it did then it could make the whole thing [touring again] relevant. Besides, there’s no shortage of things to write about at the moment…”

The album is due to land later this year, while the Dunfermline group will be regularly gigging throughout the rest of 2017. It’s a heavy period of activity for a band who have only reformed for brief tours and one-off shows in the past, celebrating their legacy as one of Scotland’s first, and best, punk and new wave acts.

Richard is joined in the band’s current incarnation by drummer Mike Baillie and bassist William Simpson, with Big Country’s Bruce Watson and his son Jamie on guitar. Sadly missing, of course, is Stuart Adamson, the group’s former guitarist who tragically passed away in 2001.

Was it strange for Richard to be working on new songs without the man who he collaborated on so many past songs?

“I think the ghost of Stuart is in every song, from the guitar lines to the structures of the songs,” says Richard.

“We are all aware of his legacy and how important he was to the band, as well as Big Country. We couldn’t ignore it, so we have carefully considered the songs to bring that out. The way we sound now is the way Stuart always wanted us to sound, too.

“He put me under a lot of pressure near the end of the Skids to play second guitar live, but I liked diving about and dancing out of time too much. But he needed another guitar there, to play the melodic stuff with the full rhythm still there, and we never had that without me playing. Now everything sounds full when we play.”

The band’s punchy take on both Scottish working class life and on broader topics brought them both critical acclaim and chart hits with the likes of Into The Valley and The Saints Are Coming, and Richard found himself on Top of the Pops aged just 16.

The Skids often bruising sound set them apart from many of the Scottish indie movement that followed them.

“We certainly weren’t a bunch of shoe-gazing existentialists,” recalls Richard with a chuckle.

“I remember seeing all the Postcard Records bands starting to emerge after us, and they were all nice and sweet shoe-gazing types, all very shy and the music was much lighter. Some of it I liked, but I still prefer something with more impact.”

Since the band broke up in the early 80s he’s moved into film and television, but returning to his punk roots seemed fitting with the state of the world right now offering up plenty of targets.

“Kings of the New World Order is the poppiest song on the album and also the most malevolent,” says the singer.

“Everything you believe in, these people have thrown it on the pyre, and the world that you trusted to have some kind of beauty about it has been turned upside down. People like Steve Bannon, or David Davis or Angela Leadsom, it’s terrifying.

“Leadsom was nearly the leader of this country and she had the wild eyed ‘everything’s going to be great’ attitude of a lunatic about Brexit.”

Richard will return to film directing next year, but at the moment the focus is on the Skids, and proving that the band can be relevant in 2017.

“The response to the tour has been truly amazing,” he says.

“So we have to go in and deliver the goods. I’m hoping that we can not just be a nostalgia thing, it would be very painful if at the end of this people regarded it as nothing more than that. It has to be something more.”

Skids, O2 ABC, Saturday, sold out, 7pm

JONATHAN GEDDES