The questionnaire
Steve Abel, 46, is an Auckland alt-folk balladeer and ‘‘singer-songwriter of the truth’’. His much delayed third album Luck/Hope includes contributions from local heroes Milan Borich, Gareth Thomas, Buzz Moller and Ed McWilliams and American musician, Jolie Holland.
What are you plugging right now?
My new album Luck/ Hope, which has been eight years in the making. The first recordings were made in November 2009 in New York, but there were all sorts of things getting in the way. My mum died in 2010, and my son was born in 2011. I had this interesting experience where songs I’d written earlier seemed to have a prophetic nature, as if they’re a premonition of things to unfold. This album’s full of existential songs about life/ death/ birth stuff, but not in a way that’s too overt or literal, though the song First Part is specifically about my mum dying. But yeah, it’s really liberating, finally getting this out there. I’m very proud of it.
The single, Best Thing, features superb vocal harmonies and violin from Jolie Holland. A brilliant video, too, from local director, Florian Habicht...
I wrote that song nearly 20 years ago and it’s taken all this time to get a version of it I liked enough to release... I’ve sung it at weddings and funerals, and it seems to evoke a lot of different things to different people. The video was entirely Florian’s reaction to that song. He came up with that idea, with those two lovers in a room together, and the intimacy in it feels really authentic, somehow. As for Jolie, I went to one of her gigs in Auckland and gave her a copy of my first album, which she really liked, and then a while later she was back in the country we sang a few songs together that ended up on Flax Happy. She got me up on stage to sing a couple of songs in London one time, too, then I was coming back through New York in 2009 and we recorded five songs then in (Tom Waits’ guitarist) Mark Ribot’s practice space. The other four on this album were recorded back here much more recently.
Which living person do you most admire?
Harry Belafonte. My roots are in the Velvet Undergound/ postpunk school, but I’m also really interested in that crooner tradition of people like Belafonte, Bing Crosby and Sinatra, and this beautiful, heartfelt, subtle approach they often had to delivering a lyric. I admire Belafonte’s politics, too, as a civil rights activist.
Ever stolen anything?
Yes, though I’m not proud of it. I lost my money belt when I was hitching in Australia in 1997. I had almost no money, so I went into this dairy... It wasn’t very rock’n’roll, to be honest. It was stuff like yoghurt.
Which living person do you most despise?
I guess a lot of people might choose Donald Trump, but I’m more offended by Hillary Clinton. Trump’s a very dangerous buffoon, but Hillary frustrates the hell out of me because she represents the failure of the left to provide an authentic alternative. It’s like we’re reliving that interwar period between 1919 and 1938, when there was an ugly rise in extremism while the left struggled to get its act together. To me, Hillary represents a missed opportunity when we need a really galvanising figure on the left. - Grant Smithies