'I mean, if anybody told me at any time of my life that I'd meet a fella from Newbridge up in Dublin, and we'd sit in a pub drinking glasses of water for which we'd paid… can you imagine? Buying glasses of water when you could be drinking pints?" Christy Moore chuckles. It's mid-afternoon, and we're sitting in a pub on the capital's southside talking about his new album, Listen.

But first we're talking about Newbridge. It's hard not to. I ask him about 'Riding The High Stool', which is on the new album. It's a song dedicated to two late friends of his, Jimmy Reid and Billy Parkinson: "Well, that song is very much about a certain time in my life. I can remember being down by the Liffey, or down by the river as we'd call it – we wouldn't call it the Liffey when you're in Newbridge – with Jimmy and with Billy singing our heads off, late at night, just having such fun, and such good times. Mad drunk, of course. Singin' our f****n' heads off, as loud as we wanted and fallin' around the place laughin'."

Is there a part of him that misses those days and yearns to have some of it back? "No. Not at all. There's the things you do when you're 16 that you can't do when you're 64. If you tried it now, the laughs just wouldn't be there."

There have been many stages in the life of Christy Moore. There have been the wild times, the solo period, the years spent with Planxty and Moving Hearts. The 'storm in a tee-shirt' years, belting the songs out over 10 consecutive nights in the old Point Depot. The dark times struggling with his own demons. And in recent years, we've had a more reflective Moore, a man who enjoys the ease of being on stage with guitarist Declan Sinnott.

At Moore/Sinnott gigs, the energy is still there, but it's a different, more meditative kind which has spilled over into the new album. Is that because he's enjoying himself more? "Oh yeah, probably the most since I started doing this. At the moment, it's particularly enjoyable because there's a whole new body of work that's come into the set. Sometimes you record an album and you might get two or three songs off the album into the set. But with this album, every one of them is fitting in already."

He's also enjoying his singing more, and he still works on his voice. "I'm much more aware of the intricacies of the voice. As a younger man, I would have taken all that for granted – you just f****n' sing and you don't think too much about it. One thing I'm very aware of now is that there are only a certain number of gigs left and I don't know how many. I don't know whether it's one, 10 or 100. But, I mean, I'd be very lucky if there's another thousand gigs there. It's highly unlikely." Each gig is now "a precious thing".

He talks about memory and the past, and the pleasures of singing, and his delight in the almost numinous power of music is tempered with a real directness and honesty. He also has a heightened sense of the absurd, and an in-built bullshit detector. Where some interviewees might waffle indiscriminately when questions are thrown at them, he's not afraid to question you back. "What exactly does 'showboating' mean?" Eh, well, it's when a more selfish singer might, um… I ask him a question about himself in which I reference Neil Young and Bob Dylan, and quick as a flash: "It's amazing to be mentioned with those two names. I have to meet you more often. Thank you. Now what's the question?" and he laughs. Push him as much as you want on his iconic place in the pantheon of Irish music and all you get back is a quiet modesty.

I tell him that I spoke to his UK agent, and detective novelist, Paul Charles, a couple of years ago. Charles maintained that Moore was one of those few singers who makes it sound as if they are singing directly to the listener. He seems genuinely taken aback: "Well, I think it's an amazing thing for him to have said. And I'd be delighted if anybody felt that way, but definitely I do attach a lot of importance to the audience. I think a lot of people take their audience for granted. From where I see my work, I couldn't do it without listeners. I need listeners to create the kind of energy and space I need in which to sing."

Listen feels like an album that wasn't forced. There's a very real sense that it came together almost by chance; and its tone is patient, almost Zen-like. He recorded it with Sinnott in Sinnott's house in the countryside, and he talks about the atmosphere of the place, of being surrounded by farmland, the sense of things changing around them in a quiet and organic way. "I became aware that every time I went back down to do another bit of work, that there were different things happening in the field."

I ask how himself and Sinnott have managed to gel over the years. "Guitar players are not always in tune with the songs they're playing with," he says. "A lot of guitar players see songs as an opportunity to play guitar. The great thing about Declan is, even though he's a supreme musician, he just wants to enhance the song. I mean, Declan is the only guitar player I've ever met who would utter the line 'this song doesn't need a guitar break'. Guitar players don't say that. If they were allowed, they'd have a guitar break after every verse."

He's also had the opportunity over the years to play some very unique and intimate gigs. Recently, he sang for the Irish rugby team. What's it like doing stuff like that? "For me personally, doing stuff like that, there isn't stuff like that. There's only one gig like that. I'm a rugby fanatic. I've played it meself. When I was a kid, I was in awe of international rugby players. I'm an old man now and I'm still in awe of international rugby players, and when I sit down in a room full of Irish players, I'm like a 16-year-old, and it's brilliant. And I got to sing for them, and they came and sang with me. Five of them were sitting as close to me as that" – he points to the table – "and two days later I'm looking at them in Cardiff. What a buzz."

He was impressed not just by the simple fact that he was in the presence of the Irish rugby team, but also by their innate decency.

"There's a man who works with me called Mick Devine. And that night he came out with me, and when it was over, every one of the squad, and Declan Kidney, all went over and shook hands with Mick and thanked him. That says something."

He remembers asking Donnacha O'Callaghan for an autograph for a friend. "I'll give him my jersey from Cardiff next Saturday," O'Callaghan said. Three days after the Cardiff game, he got a phone call asking him to go and pick up the jersey. "And I went to get it and the whole team had dedicated it. And remembering stuff like that in the midst of Grand Slams, and Triple Crowns, and all that, that says a lot to me about where people's heads are at."

He talks with real affection about sport and community, and it's this awareness of the ties that bind people that still informs his politics. Then there's the public perception of him as the "ordinary man" – how does he feel about that? He thinks for a moment: "Well, it's to do with the work. People don't know me. It's not me personally, it's the songs. It's a life of singing certain kinds of sings that gives people whatever impression they have of you. And there's a certain kind of song I like to sing."

Does he not think that the era of the protest song is over? Has the smugness and complacency of the Celtic Tiger years meant that these kinds of songs no longer matter to people? "I can only speak for myself, and they matter to me," he says. "

For me, the best songwriter in the country at the moment is Jinx Lennon. And he matters. He matters to me. And we don't hear him because he's telling the truth. He's singing about this island we live on as it is, and he doesn't get airplay." Why doesn't he get the airplay? "Because he's telling the truth." And why can't people deal with that truth? "Because it's very raw, and he doesn't sugar it up. I would love to do some Jinx Lennon songs, but I just haven't found a way to perform them. I'm looking at a few of them at the moment. So they do matter. They matter. Of course they do."

I mention watching his brother Barry(Luka Bloom) play a protest song about Polynesia to a largely indifferent crowd at Slane in 1995 when REM were headlining. "Yeah, but I think if you're playing support to REM in Slane, it doesn't matter what you sing, nobody gives a shite. It's a hard gig to do no matter what you sing. Whereas if he sang the song the following night in Whelans or the Baggot Inn, it would mean something."

This brings up something else he has an issue with. "When Queen played in Slane, I think there was three people killed, and there wasn't a word about it." I tell him about leaving Slane the night of the REM gig, about the crush of people being squeezed towards an exit, the rising sense of panic in the crowd, and suddenly realising that this was something that happened all the time, and nobody complained about it.

He nods "Well, you know the song, 'Everybody Knew, But Nobody Said', about Anne Lovett. That's the thing, we all know but we don't say. Everybody knew what was wrong with this country over the last 10 years, but we still vote them back in. If Bertie came back next week, he'd be f****n' re-elected, so would Charlie. Jesus!" He shakes his head in disbelief. "They were! They were re-elected. Everybody knew, nobody said."