Infidelity is explicit throughout the song: "She has got to go / leave your wife / play some rock and roll / be mine," urges Johnson. But the quick-paced ditty is a world away from Johnson's former life as frontwoman and songwriter in the critically-acclaimed Sheffield act Monkey Swallows the Universe, whom Johnson left last year.

"I decided to break off and do my own thing. Some people think it was a silly thing to do. I miss the gigs Monkey Swallows the Universe were doing but musically I wanted to do something on my own."

"Monkey Swallows the Universe were always labelled twee and shoved in with Belle and Sebastian, we couldn't get away from that. It's very frustrating if you get the same comments all the time – all good comments, but it meant we were stuck with one audience and a lot of people wouldn't listen to us because of who we were associated with."

Rather, Johnson wanted to persue a different sound: "I wanted to go bigger and louder."

Her forthcoming album, Roman Radio (a working title), confirms this. "It's definitely a louder, bigger sound," she says.

"But it's still a work in progress and we're still working on songs. There's alot of different sounds in there but I don't know if that will stay the case. The stuff we're working on at the moment is less folky – I went through a stage of writing that stuff but I'm out of that stage now."

"I'm being very precious about the album, I want it to be perfect," says Johnson, who admits her songs are sometimes inspired by personal experiences: "I always try to encode things – so I hope that nobody would know if something was about them, because that would be pretty weird and also people might interpret things differently, which might make it even more arkward – like with a text message or an email."

To record the album Johnson and several musicians isolated themselves in a remote studio in Norfolk, where distractions are kept to a minimum: "We've been recording down in Norfolk in a studio in the middle of nowhere with no phone access, no telly."

"It really helps," says Nat, "otherwise you wander out to the pub and you get easily distracted. Without these things you're more concsious of the time you've got."

With a new album on the horizon, Dirty Rotten Soul, and a string of gigs under her belt, Johnson seems well-armed to to take on the contemporary music scene. But her re-emergence as a solo songstress has been testing.

"When I first started doing it on my own it was terrifying. I was used to all the support of a band. On your own it's just you on stage, but it's just got easier and easier.

I get more nervous about small gigs, for example playing at Jack's Records in front of about 30 people – in a small gig you can see all the faces and their expressions."

"There was one gig at The Grapes where I was nearly in tears – I thought it had gone so badly but the crowd made me feel better – they kept me going."

Johnson's rock and roll ambitions were established at an early age: "I think so, on some level. I had a little keyboard when I was six or seven, a little Casio keyboard that I used to write little pop songs on and then I learnt to play violin for a few years but I gave up and then I settled for a guitar when I was 17."

"I think subconsciously, without ever admitting it – I have always wanted to be a songwriter – because it's not something you can aim for....it's just too hard a thing to go for," says Johnson. "My mum tells people that I am a pop star already," she laughs.

This weekend Nat Johnson plays with a backing band as part of The Last of the Summer Festival at the Carling Academy.

Her musical philosophy is simple: "I like to make quite a lot of noise these days, that's why I've got the new backing band but I'm going to be called Judas for switching from acoustic to electric," she laughs.

- The Last of the Summer Festival starts this Saturday at 2pm. See listings for full line-up.

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