There are plenty of chapters in the Don McGlashan songbook. Russell Baillie looks at what's behind the lyrics.

It would be easy just to turn up to Don McGlashan's place and talk shop. After all, there's been plenty happening. His band the Mutton Birds, a 90s Kiwi rock institution based for the past four years in London, have put out a fourth album, Rain Steam and Speed.

It's the first record since they split with Virgin Records in Britain and they've now gone out on their own label. It also marks other changes, with bassist Alan Gregg departing part-way through the recording and being replaced by Englishman Tony Fisher. And it's the first to feature the guitars of onetime Exponent Chris Sheehan, who took the place of co-founder David Long shortly after the late 1996 album Envy of Angels.

It also marks a new stage in the Mutton Birds set-up, as McGlashan and family have recently returned to Auckland to live. The other three, including drummer Ross Burge, will remain based in Britain but get together for recording and touring - a New Zealand tour is booked for September. It might sound like a winding-down, but McGlashan doesn't see it that way.

"I don't have much time for spending the rest of my life knocking on doors in Britain trying to get on Top of the Pops or anything like that," he says.

"I no longer think that sort of behaviour is necessary for being where we want to be. Where we are now is with more albums in us but a clear decision not to be going up and down the M1 every second week."

And there's evidence the band has established a solid fan base Up Over. In the McGlashans' Kingsland hallway is a poster from the band's sellout February show at London's 1800-capacity Shepherd's Bush Empire. The album, released through their own label shhhh! (and picked up by Virgin Records NZ for release here) has won many and glowing reviews in the Brit rock press.

But that's the shop talk. We have other plans for McGlashan on this cold night. We have designs on his body of work. For, like Neil Finn and Dave Dobbyn, McGlashan's back pages now form one of the great New Zealand songbooks. Its chapters stretch from the angular artpop of Blam Blam Blam, the comedy-song-theatre-movie multi-hyphenate of the Front Lawn, or the askew and often cinematic pop'n'folk- rock of the Mutton Birds.

There have been songs which come delivered in character with a story to tell, or - as R, S&S increasingly shows - speak from McGlashan's own heart and personal observations. He's long had a great eye and ear for songs set against a New Zealand backdrop, whether urban (the upbeat ones like Dominion Rd) or rural (the slow broodings of White Valiant) And the onetime Blams drummer, From Scratch percussionist and Angel at My Table soundtrack composer turned Mutton Birds singer-guitarist, also remains undoubtedly the best euphonium player in rock'n'roll today.