The album’s title, she explains, is taken from new song No Roots: “this life I lead, it’s a curious thing but I can’t deny the happiness it brings”. It’s a reflection on the strange turns her life has taken in the four years since she signed a record deal.

Not that Macdonald’s singing about the torment of staying in hotels, nor that she’s upped sticks for sunnier swankier climes. Home is still smalltown Scotland, a few miles from Glasgow; inspiration continues to come from her heart; and her preferred creative environment remains the pokey, stuffy and not-a-little-smelly studio in the Surrey home of her manager and producer Pete Wilkinson. ‘It’s the way we do it and the way we’re comfortable and the way we like it,’ she says firmly.

She began writing songs for her second album last spring, in a brief break from her touring commitments. For the first time she began poring through her old notebooks, looking at song ideas – previously she’d sit down to write a song and if it didn’t come straight away, she’d abandon it. Hence the instantly catchy songs on her first album. But hence, too, a lot of half-written ideas left on the page.

Love, Love is one of these older songs, a racing, pogo-pop belter that Macdonald correctly identifies as ‘one of those kooky album tracks that keeps the flow going along’. It’s one of a clutch of uptempo songs on A Curious Thing, and emblematic of the richer sound of the new songs. ‘That’s because I’ve just toured constantly,’ she explains, ‘and just spent all that time with my band, who are all amazing musicians, who spend their spare time on the stage jamming to anything. We’ve actually done the most ridiculous things, like spending ages making reggae versions of the whole first album! Those experiences made me think we could get in a lot of instruments and make this really big-sounding album.’

Some of those instruments were found in Weller’s own low-key recording studio, a few country miles from Wilkinson’s studio. A Curious Thing was recorded there, including Love, Love (on which the Modfather plays guitar) and the irrepressible This Pretty Face, which features Weller on bass and is Macdonald’s withering take on ‘the whole obsession with celebrity culture. I hate that whole side of the music industry – I just want to know about someone’s music, not what they’re wearing.’

Preening pop stars also get it in the neck in Don’t Tell Me That It’s Over, the scorching first single, which comes complete with ‘big hooky chorus’ and live strings. It’s not about the end of a relationship – Macdonald is still fully loved-up with her boyfriend, footballer Steve Lovell, who currently plays for Scottish Division One team Partick Thistle, nor of a career. The idea sparked into Macdonald’s head at an awards ceremony in Europe, ‘and there was a well-known musician who’d won an award and was basically preaching to the crowd,’ says the songwriter who previously wrote about her one-time hero Pete Doherty in Poison Prince. ‘And it was just embarrassing! You might have a won an award for your music but this crowd are so not interested in your personal beliefs on things! And no, it wasn’t Bono or Kanye West…’

At the other end of the musical extreme is a simple song called What Happiness Means To Me. ‘I love that it’s quiet and raw; that there are no effects on my vocal. It felt like the right way to end to the album’.

What Happiness Means To Me was written on a piano belonging to Lovell, and her boyfriend has directly inspired other moments on A Curious Thing. Troubled Soul, studded with thumping drums and Celtic atmospherics (the culture, not the Glasgow football team), was written to him while the striker was stuck in Aberdeen one Christmas, in the midst of an unhappy spell signed to the city’s team. The defiant, encouraging Your Time Will Come, already a live favourite, was also composed as a big-up to Lovell and a song that anyone can relate to. ‘I think there comes a point in everyone’s life when they don’t know what to do next – they’re scared about the future. Your Time Will Come is a positive song that explains that everything will turn out well in the end’.

The song An Ordinary Life, meanwhile, is Macdonald’s own dig – at the ‘Z-list celebs’ she saw flocking round Scots-born Hollywood actor Gerard Butler at a party he held in Glasgow late last year to mark the opening of his film Law Abiding Citizen. She tried not to bother him, even though he’d already raved about how much he loved her first album. ‘I was like, “this is bizarre, this Hollywood actor telling me I rock and I’m amazing!” But that night there were so many people there just so hungry for fame. All these people were round him like flies on shit…

‘So that song’s actually about him,’ she continues. ‘You’re in this room and everyone’s looking at you. For me, I’ve still got that ordinary life, and I just want to hold on to that for as long as I can. I don’t ever want to be having album launch parties where celeb wannabes come along and hassle me!’
Amy Macdonald better watch out. A Curious Thing is set to make her even more popular. But no matter: the beauty queens and Z-listers won’t be able to get near for the real, proper fans of her real, proper songwriting.