It’s a brave pundit that switches sides and practices what he would normally critique. Thanks to MTV and Radio 1 presenter Zane Lowe, Breaks Co-Op are wide open for abuse, and thanking him for that are bandmates Hamish Clark and Andy Lovegrove.
“Having Zane in the band is a double-edged sword,” Andy considers. "At the start, people were expecting to see him at the gigs, despite us trying very hard to make them understand that he’s not part of the touring line-up. And in the UK media, all the questions would focus on him, though that’s quietened down because most of them have been answered over the last six months.”
Well, here in Ireland it hasn’t. So, spill the beans gentlemen: what’s it like having Zane Lowe as part of the band?
“The way it works is that his effort is thrown into the making of the records,” Hamish explains. “He can’t really do the tour support thing – his schedule's so busy.”
“At Oxegen he watched us from the side of the stage before he had to run off to do some MTV stuff,” Andy resumes. “It happens all the time unfortunately. He rarely gets to see, let alone play, with us. It’s OK, though, we know he loves us!”
While the shadow of Zane follows the band in the western hemisphere, it’s a different story altogether in their native New Zealand. Their lo-fi second album The Sound Inside has gone double-platinum, while its flagship single ‘The Otherside’ was the country's number one airplay hit of 2005 and Song Of The Year winner at the NZ Music Awards. Job done there, they’ve decamped to the UK, but as Andy reveals, it's been a tough old slog.
“We released ‘The Otherside’ in May, but it only got to number 43 in the charts,” he rues. “It may have been because we were only six weeks on the ground here when the single came out, which wasn’t enough time for people to learn about us. But the album sales are progressing quite nicely.”
“We’re building up an audience,” adds Hamish. “We’re selling out venues which is great, whereas when we first started touring we were playing places like the Academy 2 in Birmingham to 40 people."
With plenty of ground to cover before they achieve their desired objectives, are they prepared for a hard bout of touring?
“Definitely. But the best bit’s the actual playing. Otherwise there’s lots of travelling, lots of sleeping in awkward places, a bad diet, smoking too much, drinking too much.”
Do they ever have detox periods?
Andy: “I have moments when I think I should detox, but that’s as close as I get. But Hamish has cleaned his act up.”
He looks over to the brick shithouse of a bandmate, who grins and says:
“Yeah, I’m pretty much a Buddist now. I’m into mediation and all that.”
Somehow I get the feeling he’s not being entirely serious…