Five years since their last album, The Broken Heartbreakers are poised to release How We Got To Now. It's a genre-defying amalgam of worldly pop, folk and wondrous spaces in between, writes Shane Gilchrist.
There's a southerly whipping around the sides of John Guy Howell and Rachel Bailey's Northeast Valley home.
It could be just cold enough to deter the stray dogs that seem to loiter (and do what dogs do) on their back lawn.
Inside, however, all is warm.
It's a scenario not unlike The Broken Heartbreakers' new album, How We Got To Now.
Buffeted by a range of experiences in the five years since previous effort Wintersun, this pair of songwriters have looked outside as well as deep within.
They document workdays, a loss of innocence, the ebb and flow of their own relationship, places, people and the paradigm shifts of world-view that occur via age and circumstance.
In short, and not to be glib, the album is about life. Oh, and wolves (though of the neo-liberal type, unrelated to all those canine visitors).
Having arranged for a family member to take their 2-year-old daughter off their hands for the morning, Howell and Bailey are settled at the kitchen table.
Cuppas poured, the married couple discuss exactly how they got to now.
Firstly, the nuts and bolts: the band began recording the follow-up to 2010's Wintersun in early February, spending five days in the lounge of drummer Jeff Harford (Bored Games, The Rip), who lives nearby.
Auckland-based engineer Mike Stoodley (who used to play bass in the band) flew down for the sessions, as did Howell's cousin, Richard Pickard, a professional bass player with a jazz pedigree.
''We kept office hours, pretty much,'' Howell says.
''It was nine-to-five from Monday to Friday.''
Basic tracking completed, Bailey and Howell did overdubs, vocals and other touches at their house.
Although Stoodley returned more recently for a final mixing session, much of that work was done at a remove, the engineer remotely accessing the couple's computer to tweak tracks (and vice-versa).
''We were happy with the guts of it, so when Mike came back down for three days we could focus more on creative ideas.''
Bailey: ''In terms of the production, we really wanted the loud things to be really loud and the quiet moments to be really quiet, as opposed to just filling up the space. We wanted more space and more instrumentation, rather than vocals being everywhere.''
Howell: ''On past albums, some songs didn't make the cut because they didn't fit into how we perceived The Broken Heartbreakers. This time, as long as the song made the grade, we made sure it went on the record.''
Bailey: ''I think there is definitely more variety. We've chucked in odd things.''
This touches on an unspoken element of How We Got To Now.
Its variety is both an invitation and a challenge: categorise this at your own risk.
As Bailey sings in Swipe Card Valley, she's ''dressing up on dress down Friday'', choosing her own path.
To frame it another way, these songwriters don't care how others perceive their music.
''The first song, My Sense of Wonder, is actually the oldest on the album. We played that with the previous line-up [which included the late Sam Prebble] and it is definitely a statement of intent. It has this crazy freak-out guitar at the end and if that scares people off, then fine.
''It's part of the album's palette. It's a case of trust us and we'll take you on a journey.''
Certainly, there are rewards.
The fourth album from the band, How We Got To Now is brimful of consummate songcraft.
Some of the touches are subtle, such as the minor-third shifts (a la the work of Burt Bacharach and/or The Beach Boys) in My Sense of Wonder; others are more strident, including the brass arrangements that converge towards the end of the album, adding further weight to warm vocal harmonies that are often used as a rhythmic counterpoint.
• As its title implies, How We Got To Now is autobiographical.
Bailey and Howell sing of experiences in various countries; from tight friends and tight times in Ireland in 2010-2011 as its ''Celtic Tiger'' economy was tranquillised by the Global Financial Crisis (Tripping Through The Ruins, Twenty and Ten), to life in a rundown house in Melbourne (I'm Not Dead), to moving back to Howell's Dunedin hometown in 2013.
''Rachel and I met a bit later in life and we both said we'd like to have an overseas adventure before we started a family,'' Howell says.
''We followed through with that but I think those years overseas were less an adventure and more an odyssey. It was pretty hard.''
Both point out there are very few filters between the reality of their lives and the subject matter of songs.
''Our everyday lives come into the music,'' Bailey says.
''For example, John is a union organiser and is very passionate about it. That comes through.
''I've always been into the idea of writing about living a life. As opposed to singing about being on the road, there's more meaning in depicting a dreary office job.
''This is the most vulnerable album I've ever done,'' Bailey says.
''I've always written very personally, but this is ... ''
Howell continues the thread: ''If it makes us squirm, then we know we are in the right place.''
Playing
• The Broken Heartbreakers' How We Got To Now is out now.
• The band performs at Nga Maara Hall, Northeast Valley, on Friday, October 23, supported by Nadia Reid and poet Victor Billot, doors 7pm; and at the Grainstore Gallery, Oamaru, on Sunday, October 25, supported by Matt Langley.
