For a band who’ve been on intermittent hiatus for three decades now, Things of Stone and Wood’s folk-rock melodies and poetic lyricism have remained distinctly enduring within the Australian musical landscape.

Selections from each of their first four records featured across two sets of this sold-out gig, with the fairy lights and paper lanterns of the Wheatsheaf Hotel’s band room providing suitably warm accompaniment for a string of lilting melodies and melancholy chords. The show began with ‘Wildflowers’ – lamenting the ease with which society can regress from its supposedly progressive ideals, why “Nazis grow like wildflowers” when “we’re all just earrings to the left of our parents” and “they’re all just haircuts to the left of theirs.” The socio-political issues that inform lead singer and songwriter Greg Arnold’s work continue to resonate in today’s climate – as in ‘Share This Wine’, written as “the fire” of the first Gulf War was being broadcast live (“Though we all fear the loss of life / Our leaders fear the rise in global petrol price”). As bass player Michael Allen remarked, “It’s a bit crap how relevant this song is.”

Unsurprisingly, the setlist was dominated by songs from 1993’s The Yearning, which Arnold has said “looms larger than any other work [he has] done both artistically and commercially.” Following closely were highlights from Rae Street, the band’s first new record in 23 years. This show was among the last on a long album launch tour, with the “original duo” of Arnold plus Allen playing intimate acoustic shows across the eastern states, before being joined by drummer Tony Flloyd for a final run beginning in Adelaide.

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Neither Arnold nor Things of Stone and Wood are strangers to the city or South Australia. In fact, it was during a childhood family lunch in the Adelaide Hills that Arnold gained a formative introduction to The Beatles (“A position of influence in my life that has never really disappeared,” he reflects).

In his established and accomplished role as a producer, Arnold has also worked with local acts like Junior and Rustflower, while Things of Stone and Wood’s last album, Rollercoaster (2003) was recorded at Adelaide’s Broadcast Studios. It’s only a shame no songs from that charmingly played and lyrically poised ‘middle child’ record got a run this time around. And while the band’s best-known track is most associated with their rainy hometown, Arnold says its lyrics actually refer more often to interstate trips along the Great Ocean Road. “On a personal level,” he says, “a lot of ‘Happy Birthday Helen’ has references to the drive between Melbourne and Adelaide that Helen and I used to do in Uni holidays.”

While Arnold acknowledges the role nostalgia has always played in their work, these days Things of Stone and Wood take care to not simply be a “heritage version of ourselves”. He says that showcasing Rae Street’s new collection of songs has created “such a wonderful and direct emotional conversation with our audience.” Perhaps the most affecting example has been ‘You’d Gone Before You Went’ – an exquisitely moving, perfectly brief and minimalist song Arnold wrote after losing his mother to Alzheimer’s. The song exemplifies the power of Arnold’s songwriting to paint deeply specific lyrical images which nonetheless resonate emotionally in much broader ways.

Captured in a few short verses are the particularly personal, “cruel” experience of “watching hands shake that once summoned thunder” – a reference to his mother’s skilled and influential piano playing. But also present is the sense of what often makes neurodegenerative disease and cognitive decline such a conceptually distressing, tragic motif even for those with no direct experience of its effects. It is an evocative reminder that we are made of memories; a fragile and double-edged nostalgia that can leave any of us feeling “lost” in the ones we retain, and then the gut punch of what it might mean to lose even those to “the indifferent theft of that boundless wonder”.

It’s a beautiful, aching song placed and played in deliberate counterpoint on the album – as it was live to close out the group’s first set – right before a more rollicking but no less lyrically engaging take on the highs, lows and occasional hubris of a life in folk-rock ‘n’ roll, a recurring theme for Arnold. But its framing here through the absurdist lens of a Don Quixote metaphor –  “The windmills turn / Like giants in the mist / nd I can’t help myself from tilting at them” – makes this a particularly pleasing exercise in jubilant self-deprecation. As the opening riff jangles round, you can almost see a Catherine wheel spinning wildly as Arnold sings the first splendid couplet: “She said, baby rest your head you’ve been tying yourself in knots / I said, I can’t rest it ‘til I’ve made these knots enduring.”

Things of Stone and Wood have clearly retained a taste for tilting at windmills with this welcome batch of new material, which pulls off a delicate balance of evoking the best in their previous work without sounding derivative or rehashed. Another new album, The Final Forest, is scheduled for release in November. Arnold says this companion record to Rae Street is inspired by the “wonderful contradiction” of his time spent living overseas. “I was loving everything and seeing it all with a joyous wide-eyed wonder, but also, I was simultaneously desperately homesick as well,” he says.

And although Rae Street has been received with enthusiasm by fans – and even returned Things of Stone and Wood to the charts for the first time since the 90s – Arnold is “a big believer in encouraging the arts above and beyond commercial interests.” In that vein, he stands by the conclusion of his PhD exploring music performance and composition: “The art itself is the achievement and the reward.”

Things of Stone and Wood played at The Wheatsheaf Hotel on Thursday May 21