Lawrence Arabia, one of New Zealand's finest songwriters, returns with a new album next month, his first release since 2012 coming out of a period of "hazy post-partum exhaustion''.
"Gradually [my existential crises] are creeping back in I guess,'' Arabia, government name James Milne, tells me of the album's origins, and its parental impact.
"A lot of little friction creates some magic in terms of inspiration. I initially found that lack of it quite inspiring, and just generally being tired but happy was quite freeing, but I'm happily back to struggling with the state of the world and the state of my brain on a regular basis. It hasn't been a complete sea change. It's still me.''
Recorded with co-producer and engineer Mike Fabulous below an unglamorous plastic moulding factory deep in industrial Lower Hutt, Absolute Truth is the most natural-sounding work in Arabia's rich catalogue.
It's a bit less of his classicism and chamber pop, and a bit more of that 1970s West Coast Americana.
The songs are still extra fine in their construction, the record's first side featuring a couple of career highlights in opener and first single the circular A Lake and the perfectly freewheeling Brain Gym.
There's also the lovely I Waste My Time, the outro of which calls to mind the jazz playing of Tom Waits' guitarist Marc Ribot and an indie pop surrealist Black Books theme song, where Bernard too is a tired father, in its harmonic minor scales.
"The lack of neurosis, or the lack of some selfishness for a while is definitely present. I kept saying the word generous when I was making it, and I don't know why, it's a ridiculous word to describe it really.
"It's quite an unpretentious record that I've made and think that speaks of a lack of self-awareness at the time, and really enjoying music as a way to express myself in an otherwise quite tiring and stressful time. I think it's lacking in artifice. It's a positive, unpretentious record.''
The album takes its name from another standout album about growing older, moaning about youth and having a sore back.
"It's a line from O Heathcote, it's a line about how people just get more stuck in their ways and opinions the older they get. They become less and less flexible to new ideas. A few of the songs are about that, becoming more stubborn, fixed in your ways and bitter, as you grow older.
"That's one side of it, the other is that I've always been struck by the fact that when people talk about songs, they refer to people's private lives. The presumption that songwriters write with absolute truth.''
Lawrence Arabia and his touring band play three shows in Otago next month, starting on July 13 at Oamaru's Grainstore Gallery.
In Dunedin they'll be at the Maori Hill Coronation Hall, a venue made famous in the Flying Nun days after the Chills first performed there in 1980.
"When I last played at Chick's, I thought where the hell am I going to play my show?''
Milne says, having been one of the last musicians to play the Port Chalmers venue.
"I talked to Mike and Tom at Chick's, and they're bringing the PA, and kind of operating Chick's away from Chick's for the night.''
The gig
• Lawrence Arabia, Absolute Truth Album Release Tour, Oamaru (Grainstore Gallery with Nadia Reid), Wednesday, July 13; Queenstown (The Sherwood with Nadia Reid) Thursday, July 14; Dunedin (Maori Hill Coronation Hall), Friday, July 15. Tickets from undertheradar.co.nz
Absolute Truth is out on July 8 on Flying Nun Records.
