On the Rise
McCabe

Having tried out a slew of musical styles, from playing with a post-punk band to experimenting with trip-hop and spoken word, he finally arrived at the obvious best fit, and the easygoing, falsetto-kissed soul that graces Sunset Boulevard, his recently released debut album, plays as if it was always meant to be.

Though he only really discovered his natural falsetto at 24 – as noticed by his parents while he was singing along to “Independent Women Pt. II” by Destiny’s Child one night – he'd sung soprano in a choir as a kid, before peer pressure forced him to quit out of embarrassment. “I didn’t want people to take the piss out of me,” he admits. Soul music, which he started making four years ago, “is much closer to who I am as a person,” he says. “It’s easier to express emotion in your voice and be vulnerable, which is definitely a part of my personality. I went through a lot of different styles, but I’ve gotten to the point I needed to be.”

For Sunset Boulevard specifically, Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On were primary influences. The result is a lush, inviting record that wears its decades on its sleeve, in the happy-go-lucky pop of “Days of Heaven”, the charming croon of “Vicious”, and the jangly, warm drum pats of “Crazy”. The songs that use his higher voice, he says, were to connect with his feminine side. "We all have different sides to us and we all have that feminine energy,” he says. On the closing track, "Soul", he sings one verse from a woman's perspective, one who “fell out of love with her soul.”

As it turns out, “Soul” was completely improvised. For McCabe, a big part of the record was abandoning typical song structure in favour of more free-flowing melodies. “I’m never one of those people that’s going around, sitting on buses with a notebook writing out lyrics,” he says, preferring to hit record on his phone and see what comes out atop a rhythm. “When you’re not thinking, what you really mean does come out, even if it’s improvised.” That might mean uncovering your subconscious thoughts retroactively. “I’ll find a line or two like, ‘Okay, I’ve responded in that way to this sound. I’m letting the sound direct me, it’s creating this emotion, which is making these words come out,’” he says.

What comes out, usually, are sunny odes to love, spending the night with “Kali Uchis on the stereo,” dancing in France with “the DJ’s playing old-soul 45s,” or speeding down Mulholland Drive. That last one’s a bit of a fantasy, he admits. McCabe has never been to California but is entranced by the “falseness and beauty” of Hollywood, and that's cheekily reflected in the video for the title track. It may begin and end with shots of the Los Angeles hills but the rest is pure South London.

Standing out from grittier, more punchy recent releases from Wet Leg or Model/Actriz, Sunset Boulevard is drenched in sweetness. At least for the most part. McCabe’s eye tends to go to the romantic, but the menacing horns that open “Sugar” are more fitting for a boss fight with Bowser than a neo-soul record. “Watch out, sugar, you don’t want to end up like me,” he warns huskily, his deeper register ringing through like a wake-up call. “Nightcrawlers” takes that swerve even further, where puppy dog eyes make way for paranoid musings. “Kraut-rock nonsense,” he jokes of the sparse, guitar-sharpened melody that carries a lyric aimed at the rise of the surveillance state, but he means it.

“The government’s constantly taking notes, watching our every move," he says. "I can’t deal with how corporate and controlled everything is [in London]. There’s always transport police, seeing if people tapped in their cards on their train journey, tackling ten-year-olds to the ground. Militant stuff like that.” It’s all very Black Mirror. Except when US government agents are disappearing civilians and college students, tracking our locations and voices, it’s bleakly realistic. “They’re fucking with our minds, and there’s nothing we can do,” he adds later.

The way McCabe combines soulful pop with darker themes – “to throw the listener off and make it more of a journey with ups and downs,” as he puts it – comes from his love of more challenging music. To build his own “experimental soul,” as he calls it, he wanted to mesh influences like Björk, Massive Attack, and Yves Tumor with the classic melodies of Winehouse and Gaye, to make something uniquely McCabe.

“I feel like I can’t fully commit to writing something completely sweet, because that’s not the reality of the world,” he says. “There’s always a darkness or a sadness underneath." The jangly "Borderline" delivers the album's rawest and most cutting couplet ("Your selfishness brings me pain / You should hang yourself in shame"), while "Vicious" – the album's catchiest song – turns inward with a warning that came out of reflecting on a relationship where he himself could have acted better.

The lurking darkness in his music is something he comes back to a lot throughout our chat. He often softens sentences with “in today’s world,” whether it’s about the urge to shrug off singing as a child or the depressing fact that many artists come off tour to go back to meagrely paying jobs. As an independent musician, McCabe's debut was a long time coming, delayed by hesitations and roadblocks. In one briefly horrifying time, it was almost lost completely due to an electronics blackout. On “Crazy”, he fears “falling down the wrong path,” or being “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” “All of these thoughts that I’m sure a lot of musicians who are in my position probably have ,” he says. It’s a relatable conversation; I’m a server as well as a writer; he’s a gardener and special needs teacher as well as a musician.

"Crazy" again finds him digging his heels in, eyeing unsupportive people who he’s attempting to prove wrong with his music. “I feel like I’ve always had a slight victim complex, which is probably not appropriate because, in terms of people on the planet, I’ve been quite lucky with the cards I’ve been dealt,” he says. “I’ve seen people around me who I’ve grown up with rise to the top and do well. I like the underdog complex, but it can be frustrating sometimes as well.”

Still, for all its ups and downs, the woozy "Soul" is a fitting end to the record, featuring a lyric that strikes me as a good testament to live by: “I ain’t ever gonna get my heart right / But I’ll take it slow.” He agrees when I ask if it’s about deliberate self-work, which may or may not be public. “You have to keep calm and relax, keep making stuff, keep believing in yourself,” he says. “Not reaching for it too much, because I think when you do that you get propelled backwards."

"I’ve heard so many stories about people when they’re just about to give up then, suddenly, something happens. I think the universe works like that. When you want something less, sometimes it can put you in that situation. Which is really frustrating, because you want to have drive and you want to succeed. But patience and letting things come to you, not trying to force things too much, is a good way to be. Let the universe work rather than you doing the work.”

He’s putting that philosophy into practice as he finishes up the demos for the next record, while rehearsing with his band for the Sunset Boulevard album launch at London's Paper Dress Vintage on 25 July. Having worked so long to get Sunset Boulevard out into the world, he's keen to put out as much music as possible now that he's found the niche where he belongs. His second album will dig even further into the classic soul archives, pulling inspiration from the likes of The Ronettes and Nina Simone.

“Putting your heart and soul into it, keeping your identity but tinkering with your sound, changing it from album to album,” he says when asked to sum up his process. “I think when you’re a musician, especially when you’re independent, it’s all about being relentless."