Maverick Sabre: “When times get grittier, sounds get grittier”

This Q+A was first fea­tured in Huck’s cul­ture newslet­ter. Sign up to the mail­ing list here to make sure it always lands in your inbox before any­one else sees it each month.

It’s mid-after­noon in The Auld Shel­le­laigh, a nar­row, rau­cous Irish pub in Stoke New­ing­ton, east Lon­don, that every­one inside swears does the best Guin­ness in the city. It’s always busy on a Sat­ur­day, but today, it’s com­plete­ly packed as a crowd gath­ers at the head of the room to catch a glimpse of Mav­er­ick Sabre singing – unam­pli­fied and raw.

As he paus­es to clear his throat, a qui­et whis­per trav­els from the bar. ​“Fer­gus, can I get two Guin­ness?” Backed by noth­ing oth­er than an acoustic gui­tar and the rhyth­mic tap of feet on the wood­en floor, he per­forms a hand­ful of new tracks from his new­ly released album Burn The Right Things Down, along with sin­ga­long induc­ing decade-old classics.

It’s a warm, home­ly scene. Mav (real name Michael Stafford) was born in Stoke New­ing­ton before relo­cat­ing with his fam­i­ly to Coun­ty Wex­ford in Ire­land at age four, and since break­ing out over a decade ago, his music has drawn from dis­parate, inter­sect­ing influ­ences – from hip hop to jazz, via r&b and pop – reflec­tive of his own life and upbringing.

Now onto his fifth stu­dio album, Burn The Right Things Down is his most expan­sive and assured yet – a yearn­ing, exis­ten­tial jour­ney that is fit for the times. It’s 16-tracks long, mov­ing through the sul­try blues of lat­est sin­gle ​‘Lay Down On Me’ to the fin­ger click­ing shuf­fle of ​‘Know Bet­ter’. With our world seem­ing­ly in flames, I caught up with Mav to ask about the project and what the right things to burn down are.

I saw you at The Auld Shel­le­laigh the oth­er day, it was packed out. How was it for you?

It was beau­ti­ful. It’s a pub that my dad used to drink at when he lived in Lon­don, and one that I’ve gone to over the years – it’s got a warm place in my heart. My Irish­ness and Lon­don her­itage inter­sect in Stoke New­ing­ton, and my dad played in pubs grow­ing up, so I was always in them lis­ten­ing to loud music. To do that acoustic show there the oth­er day was great. It was nice to bring peo­ple into a set­ting where it’s just a lit­tle pub sin­ga­long, no bullshit.

Con­grat­u­la­tions on the new album, what themes were you try­ing to explore?

There’s a lot going on in the world at the moment, and I took a minute away at the end of last year to just be by myself and make some stuff. It was main­ly to cre­ate a world where peo­ple could explore their own thoughts. I could sit here for days and explain what each indi­vid­ual tune means to me, but I was more intrigued when I had friends come down and lis­ten – every­one took some­thing dif­fer­ent away. I thought: ​“Ah yeah, that’s more pow­er­ful than telling peo­ple what to feel at the moment.” It’s more about giv­ing peo­ple a palette of colours and let­ting them fig­ure out how they feel.

Some of the songs are more abstract and more of a mood, then oth­ers are back to real­i­ty and have lyrics that are very direct and straight­for­ward. We tried to cre­ate that visu­al­ly as well, where we’ve got this harsh, black-and-white [Sovi­et film direc­tor Andrei] Tarkovsky influ­enced world, then we’ve got this dream­like, trip­py, psy­che­del­ic space that holds between the two. It’s kind of a psy­che­del­ic trip.

What should we burn down?

Only you know what to burn down, and only you know what the right things are to burn down. I think the pur­pose was to leave it open – what is ​‘right’ is open to inter­pre­ta­tion. I know for me, I often look at the world and find hope­less­ness, and my reac­tion to that is want­i­ng to burn every­thing down. I end up think­ing peace­ful reac­tions can only change things so much and get into a head­space where I think: ​“Fuck it. I’m going to burn the world down and we’ll rebuild it and it will be bet­ter.” But some­times I think that the con­di­tion of hope­less­ness makes us feel pow­er­less or voiceless.

I was hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one around the album, and I said: ​“Some­times I just want to burn every­thing down.” He said: ​“Shouldn’t it be more about burn­ing the right things down?” And yeah, actu­al­ly it should be. I had this recent­ly when I re-record­ed my debut album in 2022. The ques­tion around it was own­er­ship and artists becom­ing more aware of what we give away, and by re-record­ing it I would take own­er­ship for myself of that body of work. I lis­tened to out­takes of me as a kid record­ing and realised that in my process of grow­ing up, I maybe said too much and shared too many things that I didn’t need to share. And I also realised that in try­ing to grow from a chaot­ic mind­set I had I left a bit of fear­less­ness back in my 19-year-old self – so yeah, I shouldn’t have burned every­thing down, I should have burned the right things down.

What were your influ­ences for this album, and how have they changed since you first began releasing?

When I start­ed this record, I spent a bit of time in the coun­try­side pre­dom­i­nant­ly lis­ten­ing to music. I went back and start­ed lis­ten­ing to stuff that I hadn’t lis­tened to in a long time – as a kid I was a big Bea­t­les fan, Tupac, The Stone Ros­es, Cymande. Specif­i­cal­ly with Tupac and The Bea­t­les, I went back and was like: ​“What does this mean now?” I also had a big nu met­al phase when I was 12 or 13. I got mad into the Revolver album by The Bea­t­les, and then P.O.D., Rage Against The Machine and Limp Bizk­it. All of these albums had some­thing about them that made me feel some­thing in my heart.

Could you put your fin­ger on what that was? Obvi­ous­ly Tupac, The Bea­t­les and Rage Against The Machines are very different.

Yeah, they are but I feel like the Revolver album was quite an exper­i­men­tal record. They were on a con­scious jour­ney as well, and I feel like at that point it was not only son­i­cal­ly exper­i­men­tal, but also polit­i­cal­ly and social­ly exper­i­men­tal. And I feel like Tupac always had that. His mum was a part of the Black Pan­thers and he always struck a chord with me and edu­cat­ed me grow­ing up. He even con­nect­ed me to trad Irish songs that I grew up lis­ten­ing to. Even though these sounds are worlds apart, there’s a con­nec­tion there – when you hear Rage Against The Machine speak­ing about the world they grew up in, then Tupac and what’s going on in Revolver, I feel there’s a thread through that.

Of course, your music has always had a polit­i­cal edge – you col­lab­o­rat­ed with Lowkey on ​‘Long Live Pales­tine’, for exam­ple. Why was that some­thing you want­ed to get involved in and how pow­er­ful can musi­cians and artists be?

With music, you don’t tell some­one to feel some­thing – you either feel it or you don’t. So music has got this real­ly pure, pow­er­ful way of con­nect­ing peo­ple. It’s an inter­na­tion­al lan­guage that can con­nect with all ages and back­grounds, and I think there’s a rea­son why you have the John Lennons, Tupacs and the Bob Mar­leys, who were held up as glob­al­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary char­ac­ters that were voic­es of the strug­gles and social issues that they represented.

We’re at a real pos­i­tive point right now where con­scious­ness and express­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with what­ev­er cause around the world is cham­pi­oned, but there’s a bad side where it becomes a mar­ket­ing tool for peo­ple. So it becomes disin­gen­u­ous, and that allows the audi­ence or gen­er­al pub­lic to feel like any­one mak­ing a stance is being disin­gen­u­ous. I think music is one of the last sure things we’ve got left to unite peo­ple, as sad as that may sound. That’s the rea­son why it’s been bas­tardised for years. If the heart of human­i­ty and the world is the keep of the cas­tle, music is the last wall around it.

There’s obvi­ous­ly a lot of great music com­ing out of Ire­land at the moment – think­ing Fontaines D.C., Kneecap – why do you think it’s flour­ish­ing right now, and specif­i­cal­ly a lot of post-punk influ­enced sounds?

I think Irish music is the health­i­est that it’s been in fuck­ing ages. It’s always pro­duced some of the best bands, but now it’s even more eclec­tic and is pro­duc­ing some of the best artists in the world at the minute. My favourite is this young band called Brick­nasty – they are the truest def­i­n­i­tion of eclec­tic Irish music at the moment, mak­ing every­thing from punk to jazz to hip hop to soul.

But I remem­ber years ago, peo­ple would say ​“dubstep’s nev­er going to come back”, no one wants to hear that ear­ly 2000s stuff any­more. I was like it is, because it’s fuck­ing hard and grit­ty, and when times get grit­ti­er, sounds get grit­ti­er. I think there’s an urgency in peo­ple, like: ​“Shit, we need to change some­thing.” And I can sing beau­ti­ful­ly about chang­ing the world and lov­ing each oth­er, but some­times a fuck­ing crazy hard break­beat and a crazy bassline, or a gui­tar play­er mak­ing some­thing mad and some­one screamin, will make you feel more urgent that we need to act now.

Burn The Right Things Down is out now via Famm

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