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

The Irish singer songwriter sits down to talk about his latest album, Burn The Right Things Down – a yearning, existential journey that is fit for the times.

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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.

“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.”

Maverick Sabre

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.

“I often look at the world and find hopelessness, and my reaction to that is wanting to burn everything down. But sometimes I think that the condition of hopelessness makes us feel powerless or voiceless.”

Maverick Sabre

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.