SPEAKING to Justin Sullivan on the phone, the sound of birdsong is distinct in the background: he is outside, walking the north east coast, by the sea.

Perhaps the founder, songwriter and lead singer of New Model Army is catching his breath before a long voyage to South America for concerts in Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo, or thinking of fledgling ideas for a new album which he hopes will be released next year. Perhaps he’s taking a moment to immerse himself in a landscape, and seascape, he evidently loves. For all its punk roots, the wrath and fire, the music of New Model Army is also deeply linked to the wild, to place, and to the seasons of the natural world. The sea is a powerful influence in many of the songs in Justin’s solo album, Navigating by the Stars: “I love the sea,” he says. “It’s so deep in our blood. Right now I’m by the sea, and it’s a beautiful day. People are part of nature, and it’s part of us.

“Nature is constantly changing, the woods change, the mountains change all the time – but not at our timescale. But the sea is – we can see it change. We can sit and watch it for hours and hours, the constant change and movement.”

Justin is visiting Swindon on Thursday, August 16, when he will play a solo gig at the Vic. Two thirds of the tickets were snapped up within days and the concert is now sold out. He recollects that New Model Army played at what was Level 3 in Swindon some years ago; this time he’s stopping over en route to the Beautiful Days Festival in Devon, and another solo performance.

Although he has done other small-scale solo and acoustic performances, Justin says this is the first time he has performed entirely alone. “I never thought I was a great musician, and always through I needed a real musician with me. But I’ve realised that isn’t true. This is just me and the guitar.

“I’ll be playing songs from solo work, from all different eras of the band, though some will be changed.”

Justin has a huge back catalogue to choose from. The band played its first gig in Bradford in 1980, and has created 15 studio albums, from 1984’s Vengeance to 2014’s mini album Between Wine and Blood, a follow-up to the critically acclaimed and commercially successful album Between Dog and Wolf, released in 2013.

Over nearly 40 years, he has written some 250 songs – and over several decades of live performances has not lost the passion, the fury and the poetry that has made the band a success. How does he maintain that intensity?

“To begin with, I love it,” he says. “And some older bands – they get stuck. They know what their audience wants and they try to give it to them. I don’t fall into that. Maybe I have an element of the audience that just wants us to play hits from the 80s – well I don’t do it.

“We are not in the business of trying to please people. We want to make something good. If you are playing something you don’t feel any more for the sake of your audience you are on a slippery slope.”

He said the band’s slow evolution, with members leaving, and new members joining, was also a key part of NMA’s continuing vitality and innovation. Justin is the only one of the three founding members still in the band and over the years different musicians have brought different influences and ideas.

“Every five to ten years there’s a change. In some bands, where you have the same people, you work out your areas of conflict and then avoid them. You end up turning in smaller and smaller circles.

“Whenever we have a new member, everything is blown open. We operate like a band, and fight, and feel passionate as a band.”

And what is Justin enjoying in life now?

“Oh, people, books, films, music,” he says. “When you’re about 14 or 15 you say your bored – I can remember saying it then – but never since. There is always something going on, even the thoughts deep in your own mind.”

NMA has embraced difficult and sometimes political subjects in their songs – from heroin addiction to the dangers of unbridled technology, from migration to relations with the USA – with recurring themes of family, community and belonging. Theirs is a tradition that connects to the subversive songs of the folk tradition and the protest poetry of the likes of peasant poet John Clare, as well as the iron edge and fireworks of post-punk and the industrial heritage of our northern cities.

It is a unique cocktail and perhaps part of the reason not only for the band’s enduring success, but the fierce loyalty and devotion of its many fans over decades. Justin is supported by Jake Martin. - Sarah Singleton