“Fishes Swim and Corals Grow” is the second single from Warmer’s fourth album Wooden Box With Strings, released by Half A Cow in June. Romantic but idiosyncratic, it showcases the warm, string-laden singer-songwriter direction of the album. Though Warmer’s John Encarnacao (also of The Nature Strip) lives in Sydney, the album was recorded in Hobart at the invitation of producer Dave Carter. The song itself brings to mind simpler times, written as it was on a flight to Melbourne to attend his niece’s wedding.

The b-side is a radical instrumental (and acoustic) remix of album track “Cry For The Moon” that accentuates John’s dramatic string arrangement and the avant-piano of Lobsterman alumnus Michael “Ag” Christie.

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Wooden Box With Strings is the fourth album by Warmer, and the first in nine years. After several records with Sydney power-pop legends The Nature Strip, singer-songwriter John Encarnacao returns to traditional textures – acoustic guitars, piano, double bass, a string quartet on three tracks. Recorded out of John’s comfort zone in Hobart with producer Dave Carter, the superlative songwriting is likely to strike a chord with fans of Laura Marling, Elliott Smith and Nick Drake.

Encarnacao (En-car-na-sow) can be a hard man to pin down. His day gig is as a music lecturer at Western Sydney University, where he is developing a reputation for his popular musicology. Along with the song-based stuff of The Nature Strip (where he shares songwriting with Marveline’s Pete Marley) and Warmer, he’s released a handful of records of improvised music in recent years, including ­Giraffe Solos (2014) for prepared acoustic guitar, recorded live to his phone, and Tinderbox (2018) a realisation of an improvisatory score for theatre for electric guitar, saxophone and drums. In fact, Wooden Box With Strings makes ten albums released in as many years. Go further back and there’s his beloved 1970s cover band of the turn of the century, Shaggin’ Wagon, and even further, and there’s the twisted hardcore of Smelly Tongues.

Each successive Warmer album has been not so much a progression as indicative of a point in time. After the intimate A Prayer For Soft Honey (2002), the sprawling, ambitious The Cat’s Miaow (2005), and the concise chamber pop of Spider and Lamb (2011), Wooden Box With Strings is perhaps the lushest Warmer album, with John’s own string arrangements, hand-picked guests on Hammond organ, double bass, and drums, and another set of songs that rewards repeated spins. John speaks about the making of the record:

I got the opportunity to head south to Hobart and record with an inspiring guy called Dave Carter. I was away from the musicians I’d usually work with, and Dave had connections to a bunch of great people, many students or ex-students of the Tasmania Conservatorium, which was where we were working. This led to late nights and early mornings scoring string parts and recording the string quartet for three tracks in one session. So “Wooden Box With Strings”, “Fishes Swim and Corals Grow” and “Cry For The Moon” go some way to realising my 1970s singer-songwriter fantasies.

One of the highlights was recording “Got Older Today”, where violinist Emily Wolfe, a folk fiddle legend in Tasmania, went all Scarlet Rivera for us. This was followed by Dave calling on his colleague Matt Boden to play Hammond. He plied him with whiskey and said “imagine you’re playing with Dylan and The Band and the acid kicks in around the first chorus”. This brilliant, unhinged Hammond part (a real Hammond, mind) plays chicken with my equally wayward Telecaster part.

Very serendipitous was the fact that the Tas Con is home to an extraordinary selection of acoustic guitars. I fell in love with a Gibson Southern Jumbo which felt like it loved me back. There was also a Hauro, a Japanese Martin copy, which was beautiful. But most extraordinary was a 1920s Harmony Sovereign, on which I did the live vocal and guitar take that is the basis of “Fire Engine”.

Mandy Pearson and Zoe Carides both sang back-ups on the first Warmer album A Prayer For Soft Honey, and here they are again, lending their distinctive tones and a link back. And Michael ‘Ag’ Christie, alumnus of Lobsterman, lives in Hobart and kindly played piano on “Cry For The Moon”.

The album was recorded and mixed in 14 days – 5 days initially, after which I was super-keen to finish it with Dave rather than, as planned, back in Sydney. Graciously, he agreed to work with me for another two weeks several months later. We mixed the record old-school, as a performance on a huge desk, with very little automation and up to three pairs of hands riding various instruments and effects. Once we committed to a mix, there was no going back. Are you sure that was the one? Because once we move the faders it’s GONE.

I could also talk about student engineers Nick and Callum preparing the piano for “Wooden Box” and gathering the percussive debris I played on “Cry For The Moon” . . . the high drama of the rough mix of that one couldn’t be bettered . . . Dave destroying a tambourine in his enthusiastic percussion takes for “Get So High I Can’t Get Down” and having to be talked back from the precipice of unconscionable compression in our quest for AM radio magic on the mix of that song . . .