There is in his self-deprecating, self-effacing delivery a knowing coyness. He’s able to cutely assess his own abilities but leaves little things undone; a sop to those who might accuse him of arrogance. In this he is like many; an unfinished seam, a deliberately raggedy edge. There is a hard-headed calculated refusal to allow his work to be finessed. He is known to accuse others of only having one rhythm, one direction, pretending to see this as a failing. Yet few songwriters have such an immediately identifiable technique as Dowling. There’s no shame in his case in constantly returning to a sound reminiscent of flint in the gullet and I mean that in a good way.

More praise, this time for his stoicism. It’s easy for all of us to talk a good album, book or folio of drawings. Steve has taken to his eyrie, fuelled and determined and emerged drinking into the light. There is a beginning, middle and end, although he stubbornly refuses to allow his tracks the dignity of natural decay. Much as he’d tell you otherwise, the disc is as he wanted it to be.

Angels, Saints and Aeroplanes is a good title. There is without doubt a strong Catholic core to this man. He claims that he just can’t hear the word of God but we know he’s straining to listen. And although I’d never willingly fly in a machine that he piloted I find it difficult to resist his cajoling to at least take a short metaphoric hop over his own particular dream fields.

The sepia album cover is pure Neil Young, a performer who could fit comfortably into all Dowling’s garb, bar his shoes. But while Young is the prairies, our man of fair Galloway will never quite let go of his idealised yearning for the kind of fiery north of England crucible that probably never really existed in his lifetime. Never a champagne socialist but rather a well educated middle-class man with an admiration for the spirit of the artisan. He avowedly envies the craft while imagining there is solace in the barrel-chested brashness that so often accompanies it.

But he cannot help himself from lapsing into philosophical bantering even though he’d argue with anyone who suggested such an idea. In between draws on catwalk thin roll-ups and copious not so small beers, there is fine food, big ideas and conversation. And then there are songs to be made; his quintessential nightcap.

“Can’t Let Go” is powerful and one of many windows into Dowling’s world where “cigarette smoke” and, “a welcome inn” predominate accompanied, of course, by a strong plaintive chorus. Play it twice, back to back and you’ll come out humming it. Redolent of a long lost drink-induced Edinburgh night. Surely this cannot be autobiographical?

The title track trundles along rather like the Travelling Wilbury’s with a grievance. It appears to take us on what should be a merry reminiscence of the classroom nature table but has the disenchanted air of a man still haunted by his teacher’s refusal to make him the frog spawn monitor. It obviously troubles him still. A critic once wrote of a Shirley Bassey performance that she could bring pathos to the line “ we drank tea and ate jam and bread.” I think Dowling is equally gifted in this department though crucially he would always have an understood reason for raising such an emotion.

Dulce et decorum is a tour de force. Again a clattering almost jolly intro conjuring up images of a pub crowd enjoying a better type of folk evening before joltingly metamorphosing into a bitter vision of battle-scared soldiers snatching an all too brief respite from the front line. The haunting “Tommy” on the harmonica plays much as he will the night before the bombardment and most probably his death. And this could so easily have been lost, the original idea being to employ lyrics by Carol Ann Duffy, though God knows how. The composition appears tailor-made for Wilfred Owen’s most searing indictment of the first world war. There are few more evocative lines in English poetry than “Gas! Gas! Quick boys. An ecstasy of fumbling”. Dowling’s vocal wrings every last horror from the piece.

Try as he might to vary that rhythm, stridency dominates and that is Dowling’s signature. That and strong but unburnished words. In “Jean Jacques Rousseau” there are clever lyrics about cleverer men. Soaring higher yet than Franklin’s kite are the geese in formation. A natural phenomenon. But what if the leader has no idea where he’s going? Dowling leaves the question in the air.

Dowling is a smart man with a penchant for self-deprecation. Perhaps Owen’s line “An ecstasy of fumbling” would have made an even better album title.