Big-selling Wellington reggae-plus outfit The Black Seeds have returned from Europe with a new fourth album. They talk to Scott Kara about the new songs and the tailwind they're enjoying on reaching their tenth anniversary
KEY POINTS:
When Barnaby Weir was having girl trouble last year his Black Seeds band mate Mike Fabulous wrote him a piece of music and sent it to him.
Weir added some lyrics and the love song Love Is A Radiation was born. Though Weir, on the phone from Wellington, having just arrived back recently from the band's latest European tour, is not talking specifics it's clear some songs on their fourth album, Solid Ground, are about his break-up with soul singer Hollie Smith. The two musicians lived together on the Kapiti Coast until their long-term relationship ended last year.
However, rather than the tranquil reggae of Love Is A Radiation, Weir reckons One Step At A Time is the song that's most about their break-up.
"It's not focused on our relationship, but the attitude that came from that and going through a hard time," he offers.
With this he starts muttering the song's lyrics: "Moving forward with the one I love, help me to be a better man ... Blah, blah, blah. It's just trying to get through something that was difficult, I guess.
"But no one will ever know the true story, except for me, or her, or whoever. New Zealand's quite small and people talk but it'll all be shit unless you ask me. So yeah," he laughs.
For a band who take influence from the skanking rhythms of reggae, these sorts of lovelorn lyrics are far from the righteous, political and revolutionary fodder dished up by the likes of Bob Marley and Burning Spear in the genre's 70s heyday.
And Weir even admits that Love Is A Radiation "is a very simple song and there's not a lot of lyrics there".
"But we can only tell stories about what we know, how we are and who we are and where we come from."
The band's most political song to date has been anti-greed anthem The Answer from 2006's Into the Dojo. But, continues Weir, a song like Send A Message on the new album is political in that it deals with people's actions and behaviour.
"For me Send A Message is probably one of the better lyrics I've written in terms of understanding life as a growing changing thing. You know, just to say we're not individuals living our lives separately but we're all connected in some way."
Whatever the lyrical content, connecting with the people is something the Black Seeds have done well since forming in Wellington ten years ago.
Their 2001 debut, Keep On Pushing, with its mix of rumbling dub and uplifting reggae made them one of New Zealand's most popular live acts, and their next two albums, On the Sun (2003) and Into the Dojo (2006), both sold more than 30,000 copies each.
And Solid Ground should have a similar impact, even though it's the first record without Flight of the Conchords star and former Seeds keyboardist Bret McKenzie. Surely a sad loss with the type of pulling power he has these days?
"Bret's a great keyboardist, but a better drummer," jokes Weir.
Don't get Weir wrong, he's stoked his mate made the right decision and is now a worldwide star, but the Seeds' current keyboard player Nigel Patterson, who used to fill in for McKenzie, is an accomplished keyboard player too.
"It's been two years since our last one and in that time heaps of things have happened," he says. "But we'll just roll it out and part of me will care what people think and part of me doesn't care what people will think at all."
First single, Slingshot, with its loping dub groove, squawking horns, and bursts of distortion, is a step away from the bouncy reggae tunes, like Dojo's Cool Me Down and So True from On the Sun, that the band traditionally release as potential chart-toppers.
"It's slightly more challenging for people who know the Seeds but we were quite happy to put something a bit different out so that we're not repeating patterns, like going for a So True, or something like that which would be a bit boring or disappointing if I was a music lover."
The cycle of releasing a record regularly and backing it up with touring has been the secret to the band's success in New Zealand and it's starting to pay off in Europe.
For the first show of their latest 20-date European tour they played to 1500 people in Camden, London - "A lot of them were Kiwis but also other people from around the place," laughs Weir - and then it was on to Paris to support British hip-hop star Roots Manuva, then dates at big festivals like Roskilde in Denmark and Summer Jam in Cologne.
They have signed with German label Sonar Kollektiv who will release Solid Ground in Europe and also music by fellow Kiwis Joe Dukie and DJ Fitchie (Fat Freddy's Drop) and New Zealand-based American Recloose.
Getting on this competitive touring circuit, and being able to play big-name festivals like Roskilde where Radiohead and Jay-Z headlined in July, was a result of the live reputation they built during last year's jaunt.
"Roskilde is an opportunity bands bust their balls to get and you either break up trying to get them or never make it or blow the opportunity. We were very lucky," he says.
Mike Fabulous, the band's multi-instrumentalist and producer of Solid Ground, is also thankful. "We are a band who has a bunch of resources and the momentum behind us so we don't have any pressure on us like there was in the past. We don't have to put all our resources and have everything we've got riding on one album which, if it doesn't do well, you're buggered. It's [album] number four now and the idea is that we can keep making them."
Fabulous is the mad professor of the band. Rather than touring with the band overseas he's happy living in Dunedin with his family and tinkering in his studio.
"I do tour overseas," he says, "but having a family back here it's always too stressful really for me when I'm over there. But it's great creatively because I get to work heaps in my studio which is what I enjoy most because it's more creative. I do enjoy playing live but I like making things."
His studio - a small room inside a big hall at King Edward technical college - only costs him $16 a week to rent.
"It's basically like a little drum booth. Like a little shed that's a room within a room. It's the best studio I've ever had and there's no other musicians on that level which is great because I get really self-conscious about people hearing what I'm doing and judging me," he laughs.
For many years Weir was the face of the Black Seeds but the last two albums have been more of a collaborative effort.
After On the Sun the band nearly broke up when their original rhythm section left and Into the Dojo nearly didn't get made. But they resolved to stay together, recruited bassist Tim Jaray and drummer Jarney Murphy, and it was around this time Fabulous and singer/percussionist Dan Weetman - who is now like the Seeds' second frontman - started contributing more to the songwriting.
This time round it's even more collaborative - with saxophone player Jabin Ward coming up with the trippy psychedelia of instrumental track The Bubble.
For Fabulous, he just can't wait to get on to the next album, and if he had his way it would be 10 three-minute songs made in quick-fire fashion like they did on Solid Ground's most lively track, the 70's funk inspired Afrophone.
"That was just one of the songs that was just a jam. Someone had brought it [to the band] on their phone, I think that's why it's called Afrophone," he laughs.
"It was at the last minute someone said, 'We should do something with this', and we just got a quick take of it. I really enjoyed that process and I think the whole band probably did as well so that kind of thing, not necessarily that style, but that way of working is what I'd like to do in the future."
LOWDOWN
Who: The Black Seeds
New album: Solid Ground, out now
Past albums: Keep On Pushing (2001); On the Sun (2003); Pushed - remix album (2003); Into the Dojo (2006)
On tour: September 16, Rangataua Hall, Ohakune; September 18, Altitude, Hamilton; September 19 & 20, Powerstation, Auckland. For nationwide tour dates see theblackseeds.com
