On its just-released Meet You There, Britain’s Oysterband decries sweatshop labour in “Here Comes the Flood”, sides with the forces of justice in “Where the World Divides”, and pounds out a potent rhythm of solidarity in the work-song-influenced “Someone Somewhere”.

Is it fair to call this crew an activist band?

“That’s a good word,” replies singer and accordion player John Jones, sounding happy but hung-over after a sold-out Toronto show and an after-party with the boys from Great Big Sea. “And it’s a very interesting one, because clearly there’s a lot more to our music than just music. I mean, we’re a band, and therefore entertainment and celebration is what we’re about. But we’re a band that cares, and we tend to wear our concerns on our sleeves, like our hearts, and we support an awful lot of causes—but we tend to do that from a musical standpoint.”

It’s not that the members of Oysterband don’t put their money where their mouths are: Jones points out that they’ve given financial aid as well as musical encouragement to Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and the Stop the War Coalition. But when asked if the group has made a difference during its 30-year run, the singer turns pensive.

“Have we changed anything?” he muses. “Well, there’s a wonderful four lines that [violinist] Ian [Telfer] and I wrote on an album called Here I Stand, which came out in the late ’90s. The song is called ‘This Is the Voice’, and the middle eight goes ‘You ask me why we celebrate/When nothing has been won/We take dark hours and make ’em great/That’s all we’ve ever done.’ And I think our contribution is to make people feel good about aspects of their lives that are maybe not so good, at least for the few hours that we play. Have we made an impression beyond that? Have we changed anything? I don’t think we have. But I think maybe we’ve helped people to try and understand the crazy world in which we live.”

That crazy world takes a beating on one of Meet You There’s most striking songs, “Control”. In a crisp two minutes and 21 seconds, Telfer’s lyrics tackle Holy Rollers, blind believers, phony virgins, teenage has-beens, rehab haunters, and inbred little pharaohs; no names are mentioned, but it’s perfectly clear who he’s on about.

“That’s just us shooting from the lip,” says Jones with a chuckle. “We enjoyed putting that song together so much. I think Ian loaded just about everything in there, every issue we could have a swipe at. And yeah, it’s fun. It’s a good one.”

Fun, he reiterates, is just as important to Oysterband as getting the message across. And in that regard, Meet You There—the group’s first studio effort in six years—is a rebirth of sorts.

“I don’t think we ever lost our pride,” Jones says, “but maybe even the Oysterband needed a little bit of a confidence boost. We all need that in our lives, and the making of this album was a very, very rewarding experience for us, proving that we can still write, that we still have the confidence and the ability to express ourselves musically and lyrically. It’s hard work, but we’ve got to keep out there shouting.”

Oysterband plays St. James Hall on Saturday (April 26).