Snap happy

“Daaaah dah-dah daaaah dah-dah” warbles The Parlotones frontman Kahn Morbee. “I don’t know the words, but it has a really high chorus.”

He’s currently mulling over which JJ72 song he’s familiar with. This is after I suggest that the JJs and his own band, hailing from Johannesburg, share a love of melody and epic atmospheres.
After Fuji used ‘Beautiful’ for an Ireland-only ad (the one that tells you that you “deserved to be adored” remember?), they were snapped up by Universal Records, who are now backing their European conquest.
“Even if we took the risk of receiving a backlash for having our song used on an ad, it got us the deal, so it’s done its job,” Morbee says. “It’s hard to make headway in a different hemisphere, but this way we know there’s a team on the other side of the world working for us.”
Setting their sights beyond South Africa is a brave move, but then this isn’t a band lacking in ambition.
For example, when they wanted to tour, says Kahn, they had to create their own live venues by suggesting to managers of pubs, clubs and halls that they host a rock act (“They’d think about it and go: ‘Yah, let’s try it,’” he says in his adorable accent).
Another intrinsic problem in coming from South Africa is the cost involved in getting to Europe.
“Geographically, it’s far away and the currency isn’t too strong so the money that we’ve saved here is spent the minute we land in Ireland. But hopefully we’ll eventually get to a stage where we can pay off our debts.”
To what extent does Europe differ from South Africa?
“You’ll have to ask me that after we’ve finished our first tour, but rock music is a universal language. The content of the songs will appeal to every audience because we all feel the same emotions.”
It was the quest for this universality, he says, that caused the band – completed by Neil Pauw (drums), Paul Hodgson (guitar), Glenn Hodgson (bass, keys) – to shy away from writing heavy lyrics about post-apartheid South Africa.
“I’d much rather sing about things that everyone can relate to, especially because the country is now improving. I remember I went to play rugby in Northern Ireland a few years ago, and after seeing how it was portrayed in the media I was surprised that you could walk around relatively peacefully. Similarly, South Africa gets depicted as being a political boiling pot with lots of violence, but mostly that’s not the case. That said, we’ve had decades of apartheid and it’s not going to change overnight, but it’s more important to me to capture a universal feeling.”
Job done? See their first European LP, Radiocontrolledrobots, to find out.
The Parlotones play the Roisin Dubh, Galway (March 19); Cyprus Avenue, Cork (20); and Whelan’s, Dublin (21).