Hearing Candie Payne's superb, soulful debut album, you'd think she'd studied at the feet of the great Dusty Springfield, but there's more to this 24-year-old Liverpudlian singer than retro styling, she tells Jim Carroll

When Candie Payne went into the studio to record her debut album, she had never heard Dusty In Memphis before.

When the 24-year-old came out of the studio and started playing tracks to her friends and family, Dusty Springfield's 1969 opus was mentioned to her time and time again.

There really was only one thing for the young Liverpool singer to do. "Of course, yes, I went off and listened to it right away and I could see where the comparisons were coming from," says Payne. "I'm flattered, but it was certainly not my intention to achieve that sound."

Because I Wish I Could Have Loved You More is her debut album, there's no knowing what Candie Payne may produce in the future. Her finest hour could well be several years away. Yet she's made a fantastic start, so this is one of those rare times when a comparison like this is warranted. As much as Payne may modestly protest about it, you really can join the dots between the two albums.

Yet while I Wish I Could Have Loved You More may shyly tip the hat to a lot of old soul and folk references (you'll even hear echoes of Minnie Riperton and Evie Sands in there), those influences are just one part of the album's story. Payne's kitchen-sink soap operas about good love gone bad and bad love gone worse are augmented by a superbly shaken and stirred selection of sounds. Motown, big band, musicals and dashing mod soul rub shoulders with cinematic orchestrations worthy of John Barry and noir-ish slow-motion beats from the Portishead book.

It makes for quite a sound. Payne puts a lot of this down to her producer and co-writer Simon Dine, a former A&R man (he worked at Go! Discs with the Trashcan Sinatras and The La's) who's the force behind the mod-ish Noonday Underground project and who has produced Paul Weller.

The pair were introduced by a mutual friend. "I was looking for something to do because the band I was in had just split and Simon was taking a break from his Noonday Underground stuff. We've been working together ever since. He was the first producer I ever worked with, the first one I ever recorded with in a real-life proper studio."

It was probably always on the cards that Payne would end up making music. She's the youngest in a family of six and two of her brothers had already made the trip to recording studios. One was the former frontman for cult Scouse band The Stands and the other still earns his corn drumming for The Zutons. She remembers them encouraging her to make scratchy demos in her bedroom, "songs by The Beatles, mostly".

As a child, she spent a couple of years in New York, but brought back very few musical memories with her. "I remember going into Bloomingdale's with my mum at the weekend and eating chips in the café while watching the models come in for their dinner. I don't think that counts as a musical memory, though."

Payne says she was a sensitive and shy child. "I didn't really know a lot about music or hadn't met many people. I was very quiet and proper."

After school, because of her interest in fashion and art, she did an art foundation course in a college in the city, but found it wasn't for her. After she dropped out, she landed a job in a clothes shop called Resurrection and, suddenly, she found her groove between the racks of vintage shirts ad jeans.

"Working in Resurrection really broadened my horizons in every way and it made me more confident about myself," she recalls. "I was meeting musicians and DJs, people who were into so many different and interesting things. It was the kind of shop where people would come in for a coffee and hang out and listen to records.

"Because I was there, I listened to and picked up all kinds of music I would never have heard otherwise. That was the first place I heard Rotary Connection and Sly & The Family Stone, for instance. I was there for three years and it was hugely important in terms of my musical education."

The shop's elastic soundtrack also had a huge effect on Payne the would-be songwriter and musician. "If you're into anything, be it cooking or music, you have to have a well-rounded and wide perspective on it," she believes. "You can't be a chef and keep cooking the one meal over and over again. You've got to appreciate different angles and styles. That's really true when it comes to musicians. I don't think I'd be very good if I listened to just country music. You need to absorb all these different sounds to become what you're really about."

Her own album, she reckons, should make the Resurrection playlist. In fact, she sounds a little indignant at the thought that it might not make the cut. "It had better be on repeat play the next time I go in or there'll be trouble."

It was through the shop that she first began to hook up with local bands. She joined a band called Tramp Attack and helped them cover Dolly Parton's Jolene. Spells with other bands, including a bunch of local jazzers, followed but came to nothing. So when producer Simon Dine came along, Payne was ready for the next adventure, wherever that would take her.

When she talks about the music she loves, such as Billie Holiday, Jonathan Richman and The Band, there's a palpable sense of enthusiasm from her. "One of the main records which influenced me was Minnie Riperton's Come to My Garden. You know it? It's an amazing record, isn't it? I tell you, I was borderline obsessive about that record. When you hear my record, maybe that's a little bit obvious! But it wasn't intentional and there are no direct references to it on the album, but Minnie is definitely there."

Payne realises there is no escaping the album's retro stylings, but admits to being a little peeved at how this has come to colour everything about her. "There's definitely retro elements to the music and, alright, probably to the way I look too. But if people think that means they can put me and keep me in a certain box because of that sound, they're wrong and I'm a little offended by that.

"It's no bad thing to be influenced by bygone times. Any band who write their own songs are influenced someway by the Beatles. But there's more to me than that. Someone wrote that even my cheekbones are 1960s. I mean, come on, that's plain ridiculous."

It would be easy then to say that Payne just wasn't born for these times. Yet it's her ultra-modern sass as much as her back-to-the-future sound which is connecting with listeners. Maybe there's also a sense of wanting to be transported to an earlier, more innocent time which is making people fall for Payne and her songs. After all, isn't music supposed to be in some way about escapism? If Candie Payne was to pick her own era to escape to in a space capsule, it would be much earlier than the 1960s.

"I'd love to have sung with Artie Shaw and his orchestra," she says. "The 1930s and 1940s, the big band era, that would have done me. In fact, we've just recorded about four or five songs from Bugsy Malone for B-sides and extra tracks and that was great fun."

I Wish I Could Have Loved You More is out now on Deltasonic