Barnaby Weir admits he has done a fair amount of "stumbling home like a bumbling gnome" in his day.
That's a line from the new Black Seeds song The Bend, on the Wellington reggae band's fifth album Dust and Dirt.
"Yeah, it might not be my best line," he says with a laugh, "but I've had to calm it down a bit and realise that I'm not 21 and invincible any more." But, he adds quickly, the track is only partly autobiographical. "It's one of those songs that is not totally about me, but based on some experiences. It's about booze and drug culture in New Zealand."
Right then.
As confessions go, it's far from the deeply personal outpourings Weir let out on previous album Solid Ground from 2008. Back then, it was girl trouble he sang about, after his break-up with singer Hollie Smith, and this time around it's fellow songwriter Dan Weetman who is opening up.
On Wide Open, a song that grooves along somewhere between skanking and slinking, Weetman coos, almost wryly, how "I hear you, but I never listen.""It's a personal track for me, but it's also taking the piss a bit," he says sheepishly.
Overall, the album is uplifting, a little cheeky, and more adventurous than ever while still, in the words of Weetman, having the "same kind of reggae-ish, funky-ish" Black Seeds sound of old.
And Weir adds: "It's one of those things that is perfectly predictable. It's our sound, and we've established it over the years, and so it's not that far away from anything we've done before. But, looking at it, we've got a bit older, we've got better at our craft, and we're better at recording.
"It sounds more comfortable and more like what we are into," he resolves.
It wasn't always that way. He jokes how their first album, Keep On Pushing, was "amateur hour, in some ways".
Still, the reggae-loving New Zealand public liked it, with songs such as Coming Back Home and the dancey Hey Son.
Second album On the Sun ("A lot drier and more poppy" in Weir's opinion) was their breakthrough, with songs such as So True and Fire pushing it to No3 on the album charts in 2003. And then came the "dirtier and funkier" Into the Dojo (2006) and "dark and mechanical" Solid Ground in 2008.
Weir reckons Dust and Dirt is a blend of the latter two.
"It's got the punchy dirtiness of Dojo with the futurism, or some sort of analogue synth past-future sound. It's a hard one to describe. But do you know what I mean?"
Well, kind of, because Loose Cartilage starts out like a wild Black Keys song before it pulls back into trademark Black Seeds territory, opener Out of Light is a dazed and dreamy down-tempo beauty, and Don't Turn Around, one of the best songs, harks back to the piano-driven house music glory days of the 1990s.
"Don't Turn Around is quite disco. It just came out of a jam, really. Coming up with it was a great morning because we just got in there and I was playing some really bad chords on the keyboard and everybody just jumped on," Weetman says.
"I play bass on that song so I was quite stoked," chips in Weir, "and that song's got a great sense of humour. It's psychedelic, it's got a bit of a groove, and it's a long-player."
Weetman: "I always want the band to progress and move on.So we really just want to keep on pushing it."
And they are taking the songs on the road in the coming months. After a jaunt through North America and Europe this month and next, they head back to New Zealand for a nationwide tour starting in Dunedin on May 24.
Dust and Dirt has taken almost four years to release; a long time for the Black Seeds given they released four albums in seven years in the 2000s.
But in that time they have released a remix album and a live album (both of which were free), toured here and overseas (with two trips to Europe), had side projects (including two of Weir's Fly My Pretties projects and his solo album), and several band members have had children.
"There have been four children born in that time," Weir says.
But mostly, Weetman and Weir say, the longer-than-normal gap was because they took their time to record Dust and Dirt.
"We had the time and we didn't rush it, and I think those factors make it a better-quality album," Weir says.
Weetman: "And we had our own humble little studio space in Wellington to come and go as we please.
"Sometimes we release an album and I really care about what other people think, but this time I don't really care because I'm just really happy with it."
See it, hear it
Who: The Black Seeds
New album: Dust and Dirt
Playing: Sammy's, Dunedin on May 24
