WHEN Miles Kane was starting out, his idol, Paul Weller, took him under his wing and gave him some advice. He told him his 30s would be his best years and that he would feel "a million times different".

Kane, now 35 and living back in London after a stint in Los Angeles, appears to have heeded those words. He looks to be living the life of a reformed indie hellraiser, focusing on his music with a newfound enthusiasm.

"I'm still figuring it out," he muses. "Don't get me wrong, I do not have all the answers. All I have is where I'm up to now and how I feel as a human - and I feel pretty good. I feel pretty confident again."

Kane says he has done some work on himself in recent years, and this has filtered into his latest album, Change The Show, which is more about self-reflection than love and heartbreak.

"You look back and you don't have any regrets, but when you're younger and you get thrust into a world... From where we're from, we had nothing. I hadn't even been outside of Liverpool. I hadn't really had holidays. So even London is such a different place.

"When you're younger and you get a bit of money you just think, 'I'm going to absolutely have it'. And so you should, because if you have worked hard and you're young, you've got to explore those things to come out the other end."

Raised in Meols, Kane, who his cousins with James and Ian Skelly of The Coral, made his solo debut in 2011 with Colour Of The Trap, after leaving short-lived band The Rascals. He was the sharp-suited successor to acts like The Jam and The Clash and a close friend of the Arctic Monkeys.

At one time he was even touted as a potential band member and would form The Last Shadow Puppets with frontman Alex Turner.

Kane moved to Bethnal Green in east London shortly before starting work on Change The Show. "It was an amazing time," he says, reflecting on his stint in America. "And then towards the end I'd come to the end of my tether with it.

"But again, going through that second half of that period, that's where you start to look in yourself and do work. And then you come out. It's made me a better person - or a stronger person.

"I keep my little clique so tight now and I'm not bothered about fame or anything else. I'm just into my own little zone, doing some tunes and cracking on.

"Even in terms of going out, I like to go to the local boozer or have the lads round. I just keep it really, really tight these days - no fancy nonsense. Because I've done it and I've got that out of my system."

Fittingly for an album about his own personal progress, Change The Show embraces the music of his childhood - Motown, Northern Soul and R&B.

"We grew up on that," he explains. "If you come to any of my aunties' or my nan's when she was here, Motown and soul is the go-to. It's the default CD in the house.

"Motown classics - Diana Ross, The Four Tops, The Temptations - that's in our DNA. Then you have T. Rex, the Beatles obviously, and all that. But it's something that I've always loved."

Kane has hinted at this music before on his softer solo songs and with The Last Shadow Puppets, but has steered clear of embracing it fully.

"I was always quite paranoid getting compared to (the Puppets)," he admits. "And then on this one the songs took on a natural thing where it probably does sound a bit Puppet-y.

"But I don't care anymore," he chuckles. "Because that's me as well and I shouldn't try and fight that."

Kane describes the early demos for the album as "quite posh". But he had a change of heart after recording a new version of the track Tell Me What You're Feeling with David Bardon and Oscar Robertson of Sunglasses For Jaws at their east London warehouse space.

"It sounded like nothing I'd done before," he enthuses. "It sounded like I was in a band again. It had this energy and this freedom to it.

"When I played it to my manager he said, 'Wow, when did you do that?' We decided to make the call and record most of them again."

The new recordings were done in a couple of weeks.

In another nod to his roots, the album features the voice of Paul O'Grady performing as Lily Savage - another native of the Wirral.

Kane felt the 10-second clip at the start of the song Don't Let It Get You Down - in which the much-loved comedian espouses the track for its "clear diction, beautifully spoken, topical" - was an apt advert for the full album.

But there was a problem. The copyright to the original recording was owned by the BBC, which wanted "stupid money" for it.

"We contacted Paul and it turned out he's a big fan of mine," a delighted Kane explains. "He's got all my records.

"Me and him spoke on the phone and he had me in stitches. And he's like, 'I'll just re-record it for you.' He's like, 'The BBC, the tight bastards'.

"I was so touched and we're from the same place. He's from the Wirral as well so there's an understanding. It's quite a nice thing to feel."

Fittingly, Kane is hoping to get into the studio with Weller in the coming months. All these years later, the former frontman of The Jam remains an influential figure in his life.

"He told me to always embrace the youth and don't be jealous."

Kane appears to be doing just that.

Change The Show by Miles Kane was released on Friday January 21.