Band weathers the storm in style
Sola Rosa’s new album shows calm confidence, writes
NOT THAT FANS would ever know it, but Kiwi act Sola Rosa have navigated pretty gnarly twists and turns since the days when a lone Andrew Spraggon — the brains behind the name — would toil in his home studio.
There has been a handful of full-length albums, countless nationwide and international tours and rave reviews. It’s all been great stuff. But there have also been many challenges and, as Spraggon gets back on the publicity wagon for the release of the new album, Magnetics, he talks candidly of why it’s no longer the lonely existence it once was and why Sola Rosa is finally a band, in the true sense of the word.
“In the early days it was still exciting,” he says. “But it was a little bit like ‘I’m stuck here in my bedroom by myself making this album’. And you just over-think everything. You listen to a song a million times and, by the end, you’ve kind of lost the initial excitement you had for it.”
So Spraggon evolved the act, to the point that 2012’s Low and Behold was about having a big band with a big sound. But it took a toll.
“It was a mammoth project budget-wise and time-wise. It became this all-consuming album and, at the same time, we had some
management changes. Some members left the band and I personally went through some dark mental illness stuff. It got to that point where I thought, ‘I’ll just quit. I’ll go on holiday and start again’,” he says.
Spraggon turned to the bandmates who had weathered the storm with him, Ben White and Matt Short.
“What I had with Ben and Matt was solid and strong, so we started writing together. It was a completely different songwriting process. We reassessed everything and felt we still wanted to make music together.”
The result is Magnetics, on which the now five-piece Sola Rosa goes for a more stripped back approach, still keeping with the styles and sounds true to Spraggon’s heart.
“In my 20s I was a bit of a musical sponge so I’d get into different genres and soak it all up. Then, in my 30s, it was all about the explosion of the electronic scene. Now I have settled down into a comfortable zone, I predominantly listen to hip-hop and funk and soul stuff, but not traditional — anything that’s been made by modern day producers. I still listen to rock music and there are touches of that, too.”
But most significantly, it’s the album that helped Spraggon get his groove back. “Making this album has been the most fun I’ve had in my whole Sola Rosa career,” he says with a smile.