Compass Studios, Nashville, February 2007. Nobody's fretting about making an album here, much less the challenge of following a triple-platinum, multi-award-winning independent roots music landmark of five years earlier.

As tourists take pictures of the studio's scarred back wall – the place where Waylon Jennings is said to have practised throwing his bowie knife between takes back in the '70s – this band is just here to take stock after a break; to sing, play, kick ideas around.

Then an album happens – kind of a spontaneous souvenir, in a sense, of the joy of making music together.
That's the Waifs for you.

It's Vikki who sets the bar with the title track. "sundirtwater" is a worldly, seductive groove that meanders between styles with insouciant authority – slinky jazz, elegant country, smoky blues – and effortlessly nails what Josh calls "our finest recorded moment to date."

"I think the recording has a really great energy to it and the vocal is the best vocal on any Waifs record. It really sets the tone for the album, for me, cause it has that great, liberated energy and expression in it."

From the darkly evocative storytelling of Donna's "Vermillion" and "Sad Sailor Song" to Josh's upbeat country spiritual, "Eternity", this sense of liberation runs an exquisitely loose thread through the Waifs' fifth album.

The eerie introspection of "Love Let Me Down"; the gleeful, organ-fuelled pop of "Stay"; the electric riff rock of "No Such Thing As Goodbye" and the old-time ukulele thrum of "Sentimental" are worlds apart stylistically, but they spring from the same well of timeless roots influences, and an instinct for collaborative expression that only comes with years traveling the same road.

As usual, bassist Ben Franz and drummer David MacDonald are back in the engine room for "sundirtwater", which was co-produced by Compass Records' Garry West. "He was all about getting good sounds up, getting everyone to feel good and capturing a mood and a moment," says Josh. "The songs are essentially as they were when they were written."

Indeed, some are presented here exactly as the first take found them. Others are subtly embellished by some of Nashville's most esteemed session players: Hammond organ by Reese Wynans (Stevie Ray Vaughan); steel guitar by Dan Dugmore (Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor) and a splash of clarinet in the home stretch by Jeff Coffin (Bela Fleck).

Together, they reach a new benchmark of worldly eclecticism, without surrendering one iota of the homegrown and unaffected heart and soul that's made the Waifs one of Australia's most loved and admired musical exports of this century.

"I guess every record signals a new phase," says Josh. "Our focus has shifted a lot in the last few years – not that we were ever hugely focused on our career as such; it was always just about playing music – but the band was always the biggest part of our lives.

Now that the girls have got families and the like, music is something that we do in between times, rather than all the time. It really makes you appreciate what you have and what you do. It feels like a time of positivity. We're happy with the record we've made and we're looking forward to getting on the road and showing everyone what  it's all about."