In case you don't know it, Maverick Sabre is the real deal. He's not just another commodity looking to dip into your pocket, he's a musician on a mission to lift your heart to a higher place.
In a music world overflowing with fabricated boy and girl bands, acts led more by marketing and PR machines than a creative desire, this 24-year-old soul singer wants to communicate and make great records. Anything else is a bonus rather than an objective.
Three years on from the release of his impressive debut album Lonely Are the Brave, comes his second collection of songs. It's called Innerstanding and the lad with London and Wexford roots shows a remarkable progression.
TEN: Bringing out your first album was obviously a big deal. How does it feel to finally release a follow-up?
Maverick Sabre: "It feels like a real milestone. It's definitely a really proud moment for me. No matter what way you look at a second album, or how it's going to do, how people are going to receive it, or whatever – especially in the current climate as it's rare to get to a second album – I just want people to hear it. I'm really looking forward to people connecting with it, and feeling it. And hopefully understanding me a bit more.
Your voice has noticeably progressed in the three years since your debut. Presumably that's something you've worked on, or is a natural development, maybe even a bit of both?
Over the years there's been a lot of different moments when my voice was kind of growing in texture and in tone. I remember during the first album's campaign, when I went to do a BBC Radio One Liveline show, I was asked by Trevor Nelson to do a soul classic that I loved, and I picked Sam Cooke's A Change is Gonna Come.
I thought I wouldn't be able to sing it because it's too high of a register. But I really pushed myself to sing it and once I actually sang it I realised I could sing in a higher register than I'd ever allowed myself. From that point on I decided to push my voice a lot more. I kind of found a different tone. I started to sing from a different place, singing from more of a head space and more of a gut, a belly voice, rather than the kind of nasally tone that I'd been singing before.
The songs on Innerstanding are very immediate. Was this a conscious effort to tailor the tunes and arrangements a certain way?
For me, the process of creating music is – I'm very specific about the type of music, the sound, and what I write about within my records, and it needs to hit me instantly. I need to put an album on, and I need to feel the emotion straight away. That's how I write, so I'm glad that as a listener you've received it, because that's the intention behind it – to hit you straight away.
Your song-writing has always been pretty personal, and on the new album there's a track called Mother. Can you tell us about the reasons why you decided to communicate with her, and in this way?
Rarely as men do we ever look back at our parents. Everyone's got different relationships with their parents. Different things have gone on over the years. Sometimes, well especially for myself, you rarely bring that up in conversation, and you rarely take a moment to reflect on what's gone on in life and show that you appreciate them for what they've done and what they still do.
Sometimes it's good to reflect on a relationship. My mother needed to hear that from me, and it was something I really wanted to write about. And show her that I'm here, no matter what, and always will be here.
For me, sometimes I'm not the best at articulating my feelings, and expressing them fully. It's when I write than I can separate myself from any worry or ego, or how I'm going to say things. My points, my ideas, and what I really want to say come out a lot clearer when I sit down and write.
Just like on your first album, Innerstanding sees you involved in several collaborations, including the renowned actor Idris Elba, who's probably best-known for playing Stringer Bell on The Wire. Can you tell us a little about recording with him?
The Idris tunes are actually on the deluxe version of the album. There are 13 tunes on the standard album, with an extra five on the deluxe. The tunes I did with Idris also involved Mr Hudson, who's a great producer. We all went out to South Africa to work with Idris as he had done the Mandela movie, and he wanted to record a kind of soundtrack to his experiences out there.
So we went out there for a time, and we were working altogether, just jamming in the studio, and Idris was telling us stories about his life and what he'd learned in South Africa about Mandela, his character, and the culture, his connection with the country. He also brought us around South Africa, to get influenced by different musicians.
Mandela was still in hospital, he hadn't passed yet, and his grand-kids used to come into the studio and sit down with us, listen to the music, and tell us stories about their grandfather and the country. It was a really inspirational time. That's how we wrote the songs. I wrote three songs on that Mandela album, and I decided to pick two of them for this record.
That must have been one of those 'Is this really happening to me? ' moments?
Yeah, it definitely was one of those moments - away from music, away from everything - it was a personal experience that made me step back and re-evaluate a lot of things. It really struck a chord with me, it was a real changing point in the last couple of years.
What motivates you now?
Still the same thing: what I'm motivated by is to make music to change things, to change the world and make it more of a positive place. And do as much as I can in whatever time I'm here and alive to do something positive. And music's been something that I've been blessed with; something that I reconnect with and love. It's why I breathe and why I get up in the morning. I know the positive effect that music's had on me as a young man. It saved me and changed me in a lot of ways.
So if I can do that to one person in my life, then I've made a positive effect and that's what drives me.
Maverick Sabre's new album Innerstanding is out now, as is his latest single, Come Fly Away.
