Some things change in three years – many things have changed since 2002. But there remain some constants; George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard are still the leaders of their respective governments and, oh yeah, Patrick Robertson from Motor Ace is still a songwriter of some repute.

Of course, for a while there it looked like that last one was going to fall by the wayside – unofficially officially he resigned from Motor Ace. “We didn’t officially ‘break up’ despite what everyone says,” he clarifies, “and I suppose it [the fact that Patch gave the band a letter detailing how he wanted a Rachel-Ross like ‘break’] could be read that way,” he ruminates on whether or not it was a finale to him being frontman of the band. “But what I did say in the letter was that I needed to take a break and that I wasn’t 100% sure that when I came back from that I wanted to get it back together. I suppose that’s not technically a resignation letter…I don’t know. We just needed to take time out…”

He trails off. “I don’t really enjoy talking about myself; I enjoy talking about the music. It’s weird being back in some ways after being totally absorbed in the process of making the record for a year.”

And what a mighty fine return Animal is – whilst songs like “A Little Closer” and first single “Tomorrow’s Gone” play in the up-and-down tempos familiar to those who listened to 2002’s Shoot This or debut Five Star Laundry, what’s most exciting about Animal is the widescreen approach that’s given to songs like “Ordinary Day” and album highlight “Not So Blue” – songs that bring to mind The Verve and The Church respectively.

“The Verve have always been a big influence on me,” Patch admits, “and I think since Shoot This we’ve been shooting for that widescreen sound. I think basically Animal is more what we were shooting for. I spent quite a lot of time chasing the soundscapes that we were after in the break that we had, and a lot of the textures suit piano, and I spent a lot of time working out how to get those sounds happening.”

Unsurprisingly, the rockin’ debut was written purely on electric guitar, whilst the sophomore set found Patch penning predominantly on acoustic guitar, but for Animal it worked entirely differently. “I entirely wrote in the computer,” he explains. “I started not with a guitar but with various synthetic instruments and started from really simple points. “In Space” for example I wrote just with that bass line, and wrote the vocal line on top of that, and then I added layer by layer. “A Little Closer” started with just the bass line as well and then the keyboard melody, and then added little bits. “A Time, A Place” I started just with that sequenced piano riff and wrote on top of that. A guitar can be great but after playing it for 8 years you end up writing the same chords, and this way it just opened up new possibilities.”

It’s also noticeable that this is an atmospheric record – there’s plenty of sounds, but crucially there’s no clutter, with the songs instead allowed to breathe with plenty of space. “It’s a hard thing to do when you’re excited, because you want it to be bigger and bigger and bigger, but what you learn as you make records is that it’s leaving off that opens the record up, and the more you put on the less dynamics you get. I suppose my favourite records have a great way of creating space, and that was definitely one of the goals so that you feel like you’re enveloped sonically by it.”

By keeping the album to a scant ten tracks, Motor Ace have created an album that requires quite a bit of concentration, but one that also demands repeat listens. Patch agrees that dragging it out any longer would make it too hard for the listener, and instead the album is about beginning again. “I really, really enjoyed the process, probably more than any other process. I felt no pressure, and I managed to get myself into that mental space, and just a whole new way of writing with different instruments was just incredibly inspiring.”

The Australian music scene of course has changed while the band have been away; the intervening three years between releases has seen Australian rock’s emergence on the international stage through the likes of the Vines and Jet.

“I think the whole music scene internationally has changed since we released our second record,” he muses. “I extricated myself from the current crop of new bands, and I don’t know whether that was a subconscious reaction or whether I had no interest in what was going on. Rock has obviously become popular again, or fashionable I should say, whereas when we released our first record when we were a ‘rock’ band we felt that it was very unfashionable, and we were incredibly conscious of that, and ironically now it’s back and we’re not rock anymore.”

Of course, that in and of itself places a whole new slew of pressures upon the band – where once they were outsiders looking for a home in a world bored of rock music, now they’re anything but a rock band looking for a home in a world filled with post-punk aficionados. What’s a record label to do?

“There’s always pressure when you release a record, and they always want it to do well,” Patrick says of Motor Ace’s homoe of FMR. He admits that it puts pressure back on the band to get out there and promote it. “At the end of Shoot This I felt that I was losing the understanding of why I was in a band in the first place. We spend so much time not making music, and the whole reason I wanted to be in a band was to be involved in the creative process of it, but we were only doing that for 2-3% of the time, and I felt so much more emphasis on pushing the vehicle along. I guess that’s the reality, and perhaps I just wasn’t fully aware of that reality. I do know that I was exhausted by it, and I just needed to get back into purely making music, which I did for a year and a half.”

After taking six months break after writing his infamous letter, Patrick started building his home studio about eighteen months ago and started tinkering with things, and it was all part of the process of learning how to make different sounds, and some little bits and pieces ended up making half-songs. They in turn were then fleshed out with the band working with themselves – whilst they recorded the drums with Paul McKercher, and did a couple of drum tracks with Chris Dickie as well, for the most part it was all done in his bedroom. “We spent quite a lot of time on it,” he says of the recording process, “just so that we’d have the creative room to spend as much time as I wanted on the record without having the clock ticking and a deadline to get something done. So basically we spent about six or eight months essentially, but a year to eighteen months nutting away at songs at home. It was probably the most fun I’ve had.”

It’s clear that this has allowed Animal to open up Motor Ace to fresh ideas as to who they are as a band, and it’s worked a treat as a result. The album is out now, with a tour in the works. Stay tuned for details.