Seven years since Robert Forster's last album The Evangelist (2008). Seven years since one of Australia's most respected singer-songwriters released what was widely regarded as his best solo album, and one that more than lived up to the many high points of his influential band The Go-Betweens. Seven years for fans and critics alike to ask, what the hell was he doing?

Quite a lot, as it turns out. Record producer for acclaimed albums by Brisbane bands The John Steel Singers and Halfway. An extended stint as a music critic for the Australian periodical The Monthly that was so well received, a collection of his writings was published as 'The Ten Rules Of Rock And Roll' in 2009 – and was reissued, revised and updated, in 2011.

Still...seven years. Long time, musically speaking. Time for writing songs, time for gathering musicians, time spent preparing for what was to be the next chapter of his musical life – a refreshed creative direction that took shape as the new album Songs To Play, out September 18. Ten very different Robert Forster songs recorded on a mountain top half-an-hour from his Brisbane home, in an analogue studio, with a troop of young musicians: talented multi-intrumentalists Scott Bromley and Luke McDonald (from The John Steel Singers), Matt Piele (drummer from his touring band), and violinist and singer Karin Baumler.

The resulting album is really nothing like he's ever done before, although it retains many of the qualities we know from his songwriting: highly melodic, with incisive, witty lyrics attuned to real people and real lives.

Seven years has brought a bolder, wilder approach to sound....and a set of truly inspiring compositions. Add the more experimental and detailed production assistance of Bromley and McDonald and no wonder – from the album's opening lines on the super-charged Learn To Burn – Forster is bursting to get out and tell his story.