Get involved with a festival that prides itself on unique commissions, and any artist should see it as an opportunity to test themselves.

That’s certainly been the outlook of Paul Heaton, founding member of The Housemartins and The Beautiful South, who has spent a 25-year career making his enduring impact on the music industry with a catalogue of  familiar pop songs.

But give the man an inch to do something different and, as Manchester International Festival has discovered, he’ll take a royal mile. As with Bjork’s gig and Johnny Vegas’ theatre show for MIF, Paul’s ‘rock gospel’ The 8th has been one of the more unfathomable shows in the schedule.

Sitting in a bar in south Manchester, though, Paul Heaton and his co-writer in this project, Jonny Lexus, are finally able to explain it; The 8th, they say, is a song in eight parts based around the idea of the seven deadly sins.

It’s a massive undertaking involving a whole host of guest musicians and singers who each take lead vocals on one of the sins. Heaton is a fan of all of them, and they include Boltonian Simon Aldred (Cherry Ghost), Kenny Anderson (King Creosote) and even some of his former The Beautiful South’s colleagues in the shape of vocalist Jacqui Abbot and David Rotheray.

Then there’s US TV star Reg E Cathey (The Wire) as narrator. “We’re going to be his groupies,” Paul laughs.

They’re deep into rehearsals in Salford above a small pub now, but Heaton and Lexus are certainly taking the process in their stride. They fall about in excited laughter on several occasions when we talk, and it’s little wonder; MIF have given Heaton the opportunity to bring a piece together that has been nagging at the back of his mind for a long time.

“When I came up with it, we realised it wouldn’t be worth releasing as a new Paul Heaton thing, that it might be worth finding somewhere really special to perform it,” he says.

“And writing wise, it felt very international anyway in that it wasn’t necessarily set here. I’m known for writing more kitchen-sink dramas than I am songs about the ghetto, which is where this piece is set.

“It was something we wanted to make sure wasn’t tucked away as a hidden track on some album by me,” he laughs.

“It certainly doesn’t sound like a project that’s associated with me –  having something not associated with my repertoire is a nice change.”

The idea for The 8th evolved out of a dream. And when Paul says ‘evolved’, what he means is he woke up and wrote it down as it had unfolded – fully formed. As he penned it at home, he soon realised the dream sequence had centred around the seven deadly sins.

“I don’t often dream – usually it’s about me scoring goals,” he laughs.

“Normally they don’t have a story, but this was a complete dream with a start and a finish and people realised what ‘The 8th’ was. It became much more grandiose as I wrote it down, but I thought I might as well throw a curveball at my career and do something with it.

“All I’ve ever done really since 1985 and my first album is tour the album, write more lyrics and music, release an album, tour it. For 20 albums. Since I left The Beautiful South, I’ve had chance to have fun with it all.”

Initially, the story unfolded in down-and-out Chicago, ‘the roughest part’ he could think of, and the prompt for such dark dreams was a period immersed in the fiction of Clarence Cooper Jr and Donald Goines – both writers who explore the underbelly of black America.

The postcode has become more vague and the focus more on a community than a location since, and though Paul is keen to keep the identity of The 8th sin a secret, he says it is a direct response to the other seven.

“The seven deadly sins are that unholy alliance of what happens on the street: drug pushers and takers, pimps and prostitutes,” explains Paul, who will take lead vocals on the eight sin. “The eighth sin that I’ve made up comes out of that.”

Getting the lyrical element right, though, wasn’t the only challenge. As Jonny points out, Paul’s brief allowed no opportunity to ditch weaker songs from the set – everything, and everyone involved, had to be perfect.

He explains: “The idea of putting it together as a coherent hour-long thing was more complicated than putting an album together.

“It wasn’t like picking the best 12 songs for an album – every bit had to be right for it to work at all.”

As reward for sticking with this non-Paul Heaton format, the crowd at the Pavilion Theatre will be treated to a set of Paul Heaton songs performed by the artists involved in the show.

It’s been a fascinating experiment, says Paul, and it’s one he’d like to continue once the festival is over.

He’s discussed the possibility of taking it to other festivals in 2012, but he and Jonny say it’ll only work in unusual spaces.

“It’s not like a normal indie gig,” says Jonny. “There won’t be any requests or any elements of the set we can change.

“We want those challenging spaces where people don’t know what to expect. We’re hoping the Pavilion Theatre will be quite confusing.”

» Pavilion Theatre, July 7-9

Tweet