The band recorded their fifth record, Say I Won't, with Patrick Carney of the Black Keys at Audio Eagle Studios in Nashville. “It’s basically Pat’s house,” says Barrett. “It was like a playground. We set up and ripped through the songs live. The control room and the recording room are on two different floors, so we’d play a song and Pat would come running down the stairs, telling us little things to change.”

The result is a groove-oriented, 1970’s-indebted collection of rock songs, with tempos set for cruising and scuzzy guitars galore. There’s an energy and vitality to the music that feels in line with the best of the Bass Drum songs, but with an added boost that comes from new bandmates and a new perspective.

Album opener “Find It” is a perfect embodiment of the band’s new era, an urgent blast of Britpop-tinged punk, all riffs and hooks over drummer Ian Kirkpatrick’s steady thundering beat. The song finds Barrett in a reflective mood, as he sings, “I know all the world around me’s crumbling/I’m left holding the bag and stumbling/Who knows, I might be the problem.” It’s a new, more sober perspective for the lifelong rocker, with the added potency that comes from taking responsibility for one’s own life and problems.

“It’s a reference to my own personal issues, chemical or otherwise,” says Barrett. “The song is about how the place you live, be it small town Mississippi or New York, is irrelevant. Nothing really matters unless you change yourself. That’s on you.”