"So it's certainly different. I think that vital energy that's captured when you're recording like that comes across. And I wanted this album to be more of a whole than the previous two, I really wanted that cohesion. Less sprawling."
The inspirations and influences for the songs are wide-ranging. When he was first writing the songs, they would be demo-ed with just Setford's voice and a guitar, stripped back and intimate.
"I think those kinds of albums can be some of my favourite albums. I've been listening a lot to a folk artist called Karen Dalton lately, and her voice is so interesting. And Neil Young's On The Beach was quite a strong record for me at the time of writing too. But I don't really see that as what Bannerman is."
Some of them were imagined with lush instrumentation immediately, too - like Another Light, which has an opening inspired by a piece of film score from 1960s comedy It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
"It was one of those films that always seemed to be on TV when I was growing up, and there's this one scene where they're all looking for buried treasure, and when they come across it, there's a shot looking up at them - you don't see what's in the hole, you see their reactions.
"And the music that is swirling round them at that moment is a combination of strings, high choir voices and a harp, and probably some other woodwind instruments. It's a beautiful sound and as soon as I wrote Another Light, I had that piece of music in my mind, so I'm really glad we got to create it in our own way, without getting a choir and an orchestra involved."
He was also influenced by his surroundings - he lived out west in a small house in Huia for a time while he was writing.
"Making A Still was definitely a Huia song. You know, 'cause living alone in a tiny place in an isolated community is something that lends itself to contemplation, and the idea of an old man in a shack trying to create this still to feed his alcoholism was definitely born out of some sort of weird alternate fantasy of me roaming around out there," he says with a laugh.
The most intense story of a song on the album comes from the title track, however.
"The image came to me in a dream, of this faceless spirit pointing at me from a building, far away, and when I turned around it was right behind me. It was just one of those things that stays with you when you wake up. So I just developed a story around it, and it's completely fantastical."
He'd also been hoping to find a place for the word clawhammer, a word that had stuck in his head since hearing Tom Waits use it in a song called Dog Door, and he thought this was the spot.
"It's already kind of menacing. So I made it that the faceless demon sucks the protagonist's thoughts from his head and then he goes into a coma, and in his coma world, there are 16 guards around his bed, cloaked and holding a clawhammer, something medieval looking. But no one can see these guards because it's only in the coma world of the patient."
If that sounds overly sinister, don't be scared off - Setford's music may have some dark subject material, but musically it's more upbeat and conventionally pop-oriented than you might expect, and the live band performances are always old-school, good-time affairs.
"I'm certainly attracted to the macabre and sometimes even the melancholia, but I'm not a melancholic guy. It's just fun to write about, because the imagery surrounding it is so interesting."
Who: Bannerman, aka Richie Setford
What: Third album Clawhammer
When and where: Album release show at The Wine Cellar tomorrow evening.
- TimeOut
