It's the Melbourne band's second album release this year. They released Nearest Misses (Live) in May and it debuted at No.1 on the ARIA Country chart No.38 on the All Genres chart.

"It was nice that the live record was so well-received, because it kind of wrapped up the first decade of us as a band pretty nicely - and it very nearly didn't happen," Bryan said.

"We wouldn't have bothered going back to those live recordings if we hadn't been bored in lockdown."

As Long As It's Not Us includes the recently released single and title track from the album featuring the voice and songwriting talents of Tim Rogers.

"This was a song that was developed over many late night emails and voice memos," Bryan explained.

"We'd bounced around the idea of writing together for a while and I had a little verse and chorus which I put down roughly on my phone, sent it through, and he came back a day later with a bunch of verses.

"The parallel-vocal thing was his idea and he was, as always in my experience, a gentleman both inside and out of the studio."

The songs on the new album are intensely personal. The listener is taken on a 38-minute journey through the highs and lows, the break-ups, isolation and depression, as well as the band members at their most jubilant.

It was recorded at End of the Road studios, south of Melbourne.

Bryan agrees the band's fifth album is a "bit of a departure" and credits guitarist and producer Damian Cafarella for the new direction.

"Sonically, he has taken us somewhere else here - exploring all the kinds of sounds that we had been talking about all through 2018 and 2019," he said.

"He and I make a lot of records together, but on this one we really wanted him to take control.

"We love music that is a little rough around the edges, and there are many different versions of that - this record has more of an 'indie' roughness than the 'rootsy' roughness we've explored before."

READ MORE: Alt-country road trip coming to Newcastle

Interestingly, the album also embraces some lo-fi moments that complement the more up-tempo nature of the songs.

"The first half in particular is pretty uplifting but the darkness is still there - in fact, I think that as a writer I've explored some of the darkest recesses of my brain on this one," Bryan said.

"Shaun and Riley (Catherall, guitar) also contributed songs and they went to some pretty dark places too.

"This is a very exuberant record for the most part but it was made against a backdrop of some personal crises within the band which have definitely seeped in there.

"The end result is a sort of manic-depressive balance - which is a pretty accurate representation of us, come to think of it."

Bryan has also been writing songs with Catherine Britt and engaging in "an ambitious, cinematic experiment with Hannah Aldridge" from opposite sides of the world.

"Hannah and I met backstage at a music festival in England in 2017 and have now played together on three continents - she's a force of nature," he said.

"Hannah's a frequent collaborator and in talking to her and working with her, that gave me the courage to tackle the project with Catherine even though the two projects are worlds apart musically.

"Catherine and I spent a red wine-fuelled week writing and recording in Melbourne earlier this year and it seems like some magic emerged.

"We're old friends but we'd never tried writing together and soon learned we were able to work incredibly fast (by my standards at least) and we came out with something I'm really proud of.

"There's a fierce honesty to Catherine as an artist and as a person, traits I admire very much.

"I can't wait for people to hear those songs."

In the meantime, fans can watch Bryan and bass player Shaun Ryan doing regular Facebook livestreams.

"Lockdown is a nightmare, of course, but the alternative isn't very appealing either," Bryan said.

"I've lived my life as a gypsy, so this has all been incredibly strange, and personally I've found it hard to feel at all like myself.

"There have been dark days and music - and to an extent writing other things as well - has been the only visible path out of them. But to be honest, even that path has been hard to see sometimes.

"Doing the live streams has been an opportunity to make a connection, I guess.

"We try to make them fun, we try to make the production standards OK and we try to keep people feeling hopeful.

"And honestly, I truly do feel more hopeful myself during the half hour or so that we're playing."

As Long As It's Not Us the album is released on September 17 through Social Family Records.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: