"I think our copy has worn out," says Penina Mackay, mother of Moses (pronounced Moss-ay). "His father [Victor] is his number one fan, so we hear nothing else in the car. Even when we go to the shopping centre, it'll be blaring out everywhere."
Even without pressure from their mums, there was already a lot riding on the follow-up to Sol3 Mio's chart-topping 2013 debut. When Canvas first met them, at Universal's city head office in mid-July, there was no ignoring the strong talk coming from where the boys were meeting with their management. Everyone was tired after five days of studio slog and it was time to start whittling down the tracklist for their sophomore album, On Another Note. If Universal needs it to be even more marketable than the first (and it will almost certainly be the label's biggest domestic release of the year), the boys are shooting much higher than that.
"We want to pretty much revolutionise the music industry," says 27-year-old Pene jnr. "Rock artists are always rock and, while our backgrounds might be classical, we want to show we can do other things just as well. The challenge is to get respect in all those mediums rather than have people thinking we are only in it for fun."
And don't go mentioning popera. "I'm not saying those groups have nothing or that they're talentless... " Pene jnr says, "but we are not just another group who couldn't cut it as opera singers. We are legitimate musicians."
As a trio, Sol3 Mio have achieved fast popularity but, while they expect more albums to follow, they each also have ambitions as solo artists. Which is a problem.
Pene jnr caused a flap last year when group commitments caused him to walk away from his employer's (San Francisco Opera) prestigious Adler Fellowship. In a reaction piece, a writer for the San Francisco Classical Voice grumbled that "he may do better than spend all his time on a Three Tenors schtick. I admire Pati and I worry about him."
The singer's solo stocks will only have risen with his second placing (and audience award) at Placido Domingo's prestigious Operalia competition, at Covent Garden in July. Plaudits aside, Pati's efforts won him US$30,300 ($48,000) and a Rolex, which added to the $20,000 he won in Spain last September.
Another person who worries about the group is Terence Maskill, the former Aorere College music teacher who essentially discovered the Pati brothers and describes their pop incarnation as a "handy noose around their necks".
While a moneymaker, Sol3 Mio risks alienating the people they really want to impress, he says, "And how often can they reinvent that format and keep appealing to the same audience?"
All valid points, if easy for other people to make given these are three guys who hardly came from riches. It also wasn't long ago that the Pati boys were university drop-outs while Moses had grown up in emergency housing before injury ended a promising rugby career.
The tipping point came in 2011, with their mutual decision to study under tenor Dennis O'Neill in Wales, a $100,000 dream their families had no hope of covering. With no other options, they embarked on a series of fundraisers and established the template of their success, a winning blend of humour and off-the-chart talent.
It helped that they also found a benefactor in businessman Sir Owen Glenn.
From there they set about reducing full audiences to joyful tears, sang for the Queen and, only a few months ago, performed before a Japanese television audience of 12 million.
"They were open-mouthed in awe," says Pene jnr. "That was hugely motivating."
They've even outsold global Kiwi phenomenon Lorde. Sure, only in New Zealand, but given it's her home town, too, that's still impressive.
It's taken hard work, and while the trio admit it's proving even harder to maintain, they have come too far and experienced too much to step off now, especially when it enables such events as last December's at Villa Maria Vineyard in Mangere when the boisterous Christmas spirit was set aside so Pene jnr could invite his girlfriend, soprano Amina Edris, back onstage. With a quiet "this is for you, my darling", he went on to give an impassioned one-on-one performance with about 7000 people in mute attendance. Then, when the tears were in full flow, he invited their families on stage and dropped to one knee. It was his perfect publicly private moment.
"Just for the fact that it was done in our back yard in Mangere and that I was at the top of my artistry, singing with a full orchestra as everyone waved glow sticks under the stars in a vineyard at Christmas time. How could you ever beat that?"
Beat it? Who would even have imagined it possible when his family emigrated from Samoa in 1989? After settling in on the Mangere street already famous for the Tua household, their parents, Juliet and Pene snr, set about creating a new life for their two girls, Torres and Evangeline, 4-month-old Pene jnr and the soon-to-arrive Amitai (he's now 25).
Pene jnr was at Kedgley Intermediate when the Aorere College choir came to perform and, if the singing was nice enough, the prospect of some day joining them to get the time off class was even nicer.
The singing was never an obstacle - it was constant at home and at the Samoan Methodist Church they attended four days (and the odd overnighter) every week, including three times on Sundays. On top of that was the Pati Pack, the family combo their father volunteered to sing at his workplace, Culverden Rest Home, every Friday night.
The call would come at 5pm and the four kids would do as they were told. They started off sitting while they sang but, after Pene jnr nodded off, Dad made sure they sang standing.
"I used to wonder what drove Dad that he would do this for four hours," says Pene jnr. "Where did the passion come from? So I'd sit there and watch him playing and singing and slowly see all this stress disappear. He just let himself get lost in it, but he was also singing for the people, for their smiles, and that's the lesson I've always taken from it, which is such a beautiful thing and so empowering. We ended up singing people to sleep instead of going out partying and I wouldn't change it for the world."
School was much more fun. The boys even became fair hockey players when the entire 1st XV signed on to stop the team from being dropped. As for music, classical music and opera were hardly their number one loves. Amitai was a Michael Jackson fan while Pene jnr, well, his first musical purchase was a cassette of WWE anthems.
"We'd take it down to the trampoline to play wrestling and my sister would be yelling, 'I want Triple H', and I'd be 'Wait, wait, I'm fast-forwarding'. I don't miss cassettes."
Terence Maskill was the first to push them hard.
"They were head and shoulders above the others and there was obviously a natural, raw, God-given talent there, the likes of which I'd only encountered once or twice before. It's rare to find, and even rarer in brothers but, as for a career, that wasn't in the picture yet."
He also taught the brothers piano and they got some of the highest marks in the national piano grade exams before dropping out.
If their commitment seemed uncertain, that may have been because at home singing was more of a hobby than a future. Their parents saw it as their duty to set their children up for the future and already had stopped one daughter from following her own dream by insisting she go to university for a practical commerce degree instead.
All was well with the boys while Pene jnr talked about getting into IT, so they were surprised when he started a music degree. And if they were relieved to see Amitai start a medical degree, they were even more surprised when he dropped out and announced he was following his brother, who had also dropped out, to Wales.
Not so fast. The pair were sat down and told to explain how music could be a job.
"We always had to make sure they were making the right decision for the right reasons," says Juliet. "At the back of my mind I'm still worried about them. It's the real world out there, but if they can do well now then they can do even better in the future. They just have to put their minds to it."
But, in the back of their minds was how they'd treated their daughter. After being capped, she'd come home, handed over her certificate and told her parents, "I did it because of you, but I hated it."
If they'd made a mistake with their girls, maybe they should cut the boys some slack.
As for Moses, he met Pene jnr in the choir that had backed Andrea Bocelli in his Auckland concert in 2008, but the trio didn't come together until going to the University of Auckland, where they discovered they were related through second cousins.
The 25-year-old is a different man to the brothers, with a solidity that's helped him thrive when he easily could have become a third wheel. He was another surprise package. With 70 and 30 per cent hearing as a young child, a future as a singer was not what anyone would have picked. He didn't even know if he was in tune until his hearing came right miraculously at the age of 11.
He came into his own at Rosmini College, where he starred for the 1st XV and became head boy, just as his older brother, Marley, had done.
Musically, he says he'd been tortured with piano lessons until Sue Williams, a singing teacher at Rosmini, encouraged him to train his voice.
"It wasn't like anything we'd listened to at home," says his mother, Penina. "I'm not sure we even knew [he was singing] classical music."
Having only heard Moses sing at church, his parents' first inkling of his true ability came when he played Captain von Trapp in a Sound of Music co-production at Auckland Girls' Grammar.
"He sang Edelweiss and we all burst into tears. We hadn't heard this kind of voice from him before. I mean he was quite slender then and out came this deep, deep voice. It almost sounded disembodied."
But it was Old Man River that made him world famous at Rosmini. Disbelieving schoolmates even demanded an encore after he finished his performance, because they refused to accept he wasn't miming to a recording. He still gets the odd request for the song at Sol3 Mio concerts.
It took some getting used to for Moses as well and he began recording himself to find his best register. He would assemble a capella versions of songs, including some originals, beginning at 5am when his voice was the lowest, then gradually adding layers as it changed over the day.
Then it was off to university where he was the only member of Sol3 Mio to complete his music degree before they went to Wales to do masters degrees. This was an idea his father took a while to get used to. Victor Mackay had thought a future in engineering was more likely for his son, or rugby, where his skills put Moses in several North Harbour age group sides until a head injury left him paralysed temporarily.
"I was lying there, freaking out, and thinking, 'What am I doing?'." He switched to social rugby but gave that away when he dislocated a knee.
But Dad has come round in a big way and cannot get enough of seeing his son perform.
"Just to see how spellbound the audience gets is always a proud moment."
So yes, it's been a ride for the whole family, all the way down to Moses' nieces and nephews, who see him as a total hero. Still, that doesn't mean his mother won't worry about the pressure he's under to succeed.
"He tells me it's all right and he's okay but, as a parent, you're going to see something else and worry about it. He is quite grounded and humble, though, and he values the simple things in life, so I take my hat off to him, I really do. He's got the best job in the world."
It hasn't been easy sailing, though. The trio admit they've endured the occasional bout of racism.
"Yeah, we've battled the stereotypes," says Pene jnr, "and it's harder when you're from South Auckland. Then it's like: 'Really? Come on.' And we do feel like ambassadors for the Polynesian community, even if at the start it felt like we had put ourselves up for ridicule. Now, we're changing people's perceptions by getting them to give credit to our people and our music while not conforming to those other ideas."
Which is why their performance of We Are Samoa at a sold-out show in Tauranga on their first tour had them crying buckets.
"In Tauranga it felt like we'd overcome those barriers and that was so empowering, like we'd fought our way to the top, and it was so moving to see the impact of that from the stage. We felt a huge sense of pride in where we'd come from, in our families and in ourselves. Then we bound up so that if someone's voice was giving in [to] the emotion someone else could take over. That was the most moving song I've ever sung."
If they felt like heroes on stage, it's a different story at home.
"No, they don't get any star treatment when they get home," says Juliet Pati. "We don't really like this being famous kind of thing so, when they come home, they still have to wash the dishes, clean the house and keep their rooms tidy."
"We don't have stars in this family," adds Penina Mackay. "He has to leave all that stuff at the end of the driveway. As a professional mum, I think home is where he needs to recharge his batteries."
And as long as the boys keep popping out new CDs for the car, everybody will be happy.
On Another Note will be released on CD and on iTunes, on October 9.
