WITH a successful new studio album and a festival-soaked summer under his belt, Frank Turner returns to his Hampshire roots for two sold out dates in Southampton this weekend.

Positive Songs For Negative People is the singer-songwriter's sixth album and the follow up to Tape Deck Heart.

“I feel like this record is my definitive statement, a summation of the first five records,” he says.

It has been an eventful decade for the troubadour from Winchester who now resides in Holloway, North London. Turner released his debut album, Sleep is For The Week, in 2007 and has been on a stunning upward curve ever since. He is now one of the country’s most cherished songwriters, a man who plays the biggest venues in the land and whose records reach the higher echelons of the charts but who has never lost sight of his original MO: write, record, tour, repeat.

As he turned his attention towards his sixth album at the tail-end of 2014, Turner thought back to his debut. “When a band makes a debut record, there’s a freshness and excitement to it that bands often lose as time goes by,” he says. “I wanted to try and make a record with that young, exciting feel.” The idea was that Frank and his band would capture the exhilarating thrill of their live show. After a period of writing and perfecting the songs at a rehearsal studio in Oxfordshire, they headed to the US for an intense nine-day recording session in which the album was completed. “Pretty much all of it is live. The end result is everything I wanted it to be,” he says.

Frank plays the second and third nights of his 16 date UK headline tour at the 02 Guildhall tonight and tomorrow night, backed by his trusted backing band The Sleeping Souls and supported by Skinny Lister and Will Varley.