Having listened long and hard to his three solo albums, I can't be the only person still wondering why Roddy Hart is not a household name.

Sure, he's a regular BBC Radio Scotland and Celtic Connections presence, a combo that's given him a certain homeland fame, but here's a man who has the looks and the self-penned songs to outshine any number of solo males who've been given a leg-up from a TV talent show.

Over the past few years, Hart has been playing more and more with his six-piece outfit The Lonesome Fire, including gigs as the high-profile Celtic Connections house band for Bob Dylan, Gerry Rafferty and Levon Helm songbook showcases.

It's high time he got a full band album out there on the shelves, because his own burgeoning songbook isn't half bad either. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that Roddy Hart is a songwriter who could stand shoulder to shoulder with Gary Barlow: a fair number of the tracks on this new album could, with some production tweaks obviously, slip unnoticed into a Take That set - and I mean that as the highest compliment within the pop sphere.

So yes, with The Lonesome Fire as a full-bodied back-up, Hart continues to write at the top of his game. Melodies hook the listener on the very first spin but have enough stay-the-distance depth for repeated plays. In particular, when the boys' get-together mood is toned down, the ominous organ chords and drum beats of Ghost Of Love or the tightly wound guitar and refined string arrangement of Queenstown are stadium epic in their very bones.

There is, however, a tendency to rough up the guitar sound in an Edge-style manner that might scare away the mainstream audience attracted by the sweet addiction of the songs themselves. Not only that, when Hart leans in another direction - one inspired by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, as with the Born To Run glockenspiel chime on Bad Blood - too many instruments seem to be competing for the production middle ground. That said, Bright Light Fever, with its insistent door-knock drumbeat and oh-oh-oh-oh chorus, is the equal of almost anything in The Killers' catalogue.

Hart deserves a legitimate place in the long line of classic Scottish pop writers that hit a peak in the 1980s and continued long past Britpop. By an odd coincidence, several of his peers from earlier years - Texas, Justin Currie, Travis - have themselves released new records in recent months. Fans of those acts would do well to prise themselves away from tried-and-tested names already weighing down their CD collections and lend a fresh ear to Roddy Hart And The Lonesome Fire. They won't be disappointed.