When we last spoke to David Duchovny, in 2018, he was riding high on the second season of a successful revival of The X-Files, the release of a new album (Every Third Thought), and the reality that he was also thriving in his other side-career as an unexpected novelist.

Three years on, and he’s proving his prolificness to perhaps be a permanent setting, with his most recent book Truly Like Lightning being released (via Macmillan) this February to raves from the likes of the LA Times and The Washington Post. A third album of music, intriguingly titled Gestureland, will hit the digital shelves this August 20.

Yet for all his successes, Duchovny has also always had a world weary way of projecting out into the world. His Agent Mulder, of course, barely ever cracked a grin. And his songs still tend to skim the more melancholy fringes of the great human experience. To wit, the first single from the album, ‘Layin’ On The Tracks’, which weds Pixies / Sonic Youth style guitar dissonance with the sort of solemn, dark melancholia more associated with the likes of Neil Young or Tindersticks.

Lyrically, he takes direct aim at the continuing fealty to the disgraced Donald Trump, by observing, “The crowds will gather in the poison rain / To hear what they want / It’s a killing joke, that no one laughs at,” and referring to the ex-President as a “stupid orange man in a cheap red hat.”

The new album promises to be yet more of mix of the personal and political, something which would seem to be almost unavoidable for a songwriter (and writer) of his already well established sensitivity to the unsettling situations unfolding around us daily during these particularly turbulent times.

“The album represents three years of writing,” he explains, “and the songs are obviously inspired by present day life and problems; but we hope to make them universal. We also stretch our sound a little – getting both heavier and lighter at different times.”

But then he lets slip with one last significant clue as to what we can expect from Gestureland: “You want to know which songs are about me? None of them. They’re about you.”

Obviously now, we can’t wait to hear them.