When Yellow Ostrich – fronted by Wisconsin's Alex Schaaf, who has long been connected to the Milwaukee scene – returned home in November for a gig, we didn't expect to be talking to him again so soon.

At that point Yellow Ostrich was touring in support of the Barsuk Records re-release of the group's "The Mistress" disc, which had been self-released in 2010.

Now, Schaaf and company are back on the road, this time backing a great new record, "Strange Land," packed with catchy guitar riffs, a thundering rhythm section and Schaaf's boyish voice.

While "Strange Land" was perhaps at the forefront in Yellow Ostrich's mind, it had to spend its evenings giving folks what they wanted to hear from "The Mistress" and talking about a year-old record to media during the day.

This time, Schaaf says, it's different. The band is on its first headlining tour and supporting a new record that fans have had a little time to get to know.

We caught up with Schaaf to ask him about the record, its Milwaukee ties (there are a few) and what's on the horizon.

OnMilwaukee.com: "Strange Land" arrives pretty darn quickly after the Barsuk release of "The Mistress," did it feel sorta weird touring and talking about the last record when you must have already pretty much completed a new one?

Alex Schaaf: Yeah, it was a little bit of a weird situation, to be playing all these shows and playing new songs with the new lineup, when people only had "The Mistress" to listen to. It's like we were introducing this brand new thing that was different from the album that was out. People would come to the show thinking they were there to see a red square, and then we'd throw a big green triangle in their faces.

I started writing the "Strange Land" songs back in October 2010, I think "Daughter" was the first one, and we started playing them live right away. So we've been playing "Daughter" live for about a year and a half now, and our first tour, in March 2011, featured five or six of these new songs, as well.

So almost all of these songs have been around for a year or so, and so they don't feel exactly "new" to us. But it's great because doing it that way allowed the songs to evolve on the road, and when we went into the studio last August to record them, they felt pretty complete.

There's a couple of songs that we have never really played live – "I Want Yr Love," "When All is Dead" and "Wear Suits" – so we're excited to do this next tour, to bring those to life for the first time. There's still going to be a lot of "new"-ness to this tour, and to this year in general. It's great to finally get "caught up," to where the band that people can hear in their headphones is more closely related to the band that they can see at the shows.

OMC: Does that same sort of weird timeline, the one that gave "The Mistress" such a long lifespan – make it maybe even a little more exciting to be hitting the road and talking to media about a new record?

AS: We're definitely very excited for this tour, and for this year, because this new album is finally coming out, and it will be more of a complete picture. As opposed to last year, where we were a little "ahead of the curve," moving on to the new stuff before everyone else was done pushing "The Mistress."

We've been playing a lot of these songs for the past year or so, so up until now they've always been "new songs" that no one has heard. But it's helped that we have usually always been the "new band that no one has heard," so in that sense, it didn't really matter if the songs we played had been officially released or not, since every song was new to everyone.

But, yeah, it's great that we'll be playing more songs that people actually know, and the fact that it's our first real headlining tour is exciting, because it's our own show now, and we're not opening for another band. It will be a good opportunity to stretch out a little bit and take some more chances.

OMC: Now that you have a pretty big indie behind you, did your approach change at all? Was there more money to make a record in a different sort of way?

AS: The approach changed in a big way. "The Mistress" was done mostly by myself, in a room with one microphone. For this new stuff, we knew from the start that we wanted to make a full-band record, and have it be really live and raw, to sound like a band in a room. I'm always interested in doing the opposite of what I just did, so I wanted to get as far away from "The Mistress" as I could for the new stuff.

We had a little more money to make the record, but certainly not a huge budget where we could spend weeks in a fancy studio. So we went up to a little studio outside of Woodstock N.Y., and brought Beau Sorenson with us, an amazing engineer who really had a huge impact on how the record turned out. We were there for five or six days, and tracked most of the record in those few days. Then we went to a friend's studio in Kingston, N.Y., and did some horn and vocal overdubs there.

But most of the record was tracked live, with guitar, bass and drums all going at the same time, and we would keep whole takes, not splicing together different takes. Some of the vocals are live as well, like on "Up in The Mountains." We were just really into the idea of capturing this raw, live feeling that we had gotten from playing so many shows together, and we didn't want to ruin that by doing endless tinkering.

A few weeks later, we went out to Portland, Ore., and mixed the record with Beau for a couple of weeks. So it really was done pretty quickly, but that was mostly due to the fact that the songs were really solid after playing them for months and months, so we didn't have to mess with them too much in the studio. For the next record, we'll probably spend two years moving waveforms around on the computer, in order to do the opposite of what we did for "Strange Land," but for now this approach worked pretty well.

OMC: Happy to see that the new record, like the last one, has a Milwaukee connection. Do you still feel connected to and rooted in the scene here? Will that connection endure, do you think, even as you continue to live and work far away?

AS: Yes, CJ Foeckler (from Milwaukee) took the album cover photo, and it was taken at the Cactus Club, right in the main room next to the stage. I'll always be from Wisconsin, I love going back and it's an important part of me. I'll always feel that close connection to Wisconsin; I've only been gone for a year and a half now, but I still miss it constantly. Some day I'll be back, I'm sure.

OMC: I remember you saying you have three records with Barsuk. Have you started it? Hell, have you finished it yet?

AS: I wouldn't want to give anything away ... let's talk in a few months.