A HUSHED beauty radiates through For She Who Hangs The Moon, the new album by Vive La Rose aka Edinburgh-born artist David Luximon-Herbert.

Bar lead single Rio Grande, a glistening, relatively peppy tale of a couple who long to travel the world but are trapped by circumstance, these are nocturnal, cinematic songs honeyed with hope and Luximon-Herbert’s gentle, almost whispered vocals.

“Some of it is quieter than it would have maybe been otherwise,” says the musician, who has also recorded under his pre-married name David James Herbert and as part of Pat Whelan’s dreamy BBC 6 Music favourites Welfare.

“A lot of it was recorded before I went to work at four or five in the morning, me being very quiet so as not to wake the person up in the other room. The first track Night Terrors really was about wakening up very, very early in the morning and thinking about what I needed to do to get this done. When that happened, I would end up just getting up and setting to work on it.”

Journeying through elegant piano solo pieces to the pedal-steal heartbreak of Given Time and the scuffed, alt-country of current single Schiehallion, For She Who Hangs The Moon was co-produced with Oliver Betts, drummer for The Duke Spirit, in his east London studio.

Additional musicians include Terry Edwards (PJ Harvey/Nick Cave), Mark Neary (NoelGallagher’s High Flying Birds), and the album’s sumptuous string arrangements are by Colin Elliot, mainstay collaborator with Richard Hawley.

The album’s oldest track, Before We Lose The Light, dates back to the London riots of 2011. Set to a steady, one-note beat, it’s an optimistic fantasia introduced by an excerpt from president John F Kennedy’s 1962 speech in support of the Apollo missions.

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard,” he said. “Because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills.”

“Before We Lose The Light was originally recorded on a drive with a whole lot of other songs that got corrupted,” says Luximon-Herbert. “When I went back to it, it was around the time of the Brexit vote, and I found it had changed a lot.”

He continues: “By then I found I had become quite obsessed by the Apollo Moon landings, that idea of working towards something for everyone instead of getting distracted by politics or getting beaten down by the fairly sizeable changes of the last few years.”

Though For She Who Hangs The Moon is a reflective record, Luximon-Herbert says it is informed by a sense of positivity rather than melancholy.

Some, like the delicate Watchmaker, are about “trying to figure out your little corner of the world”. Others, such as current single Schiehallion, named for his parent’s holiday home near Loch Rannoch, are about how life changes alter your perspective on things.

“In the 18th century there was an experiment on Schiehallion to find the weight of the Earth using a pendulum,” says Luximon-Herbert, referring to Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne’s 1774 experiment – one successfully recreated on the mountain in June 2005 by a team of Glasgow-based astronomers.

He adds: “That back-and-forth, that push-and-pull of home, and how that idea of home changes as you get older, is what a lot of the record is about.”

Luximon-Herbert plays two Scottish dates coinciding with the release of the album before he and his wife await the arrival of their first child in February. Certainly, making For She Who Hangs The Moon gave him plenty of practice at those early-morning starts.

“The record is indeed for my wife,” he confirms. “I’m like a five-year-old in the sense that, when I’ve found something musically, I have to go and show it to her, let her hear it. I’ve been doing that for a long time now, so it was only right it was for her.”