“I like my job,” says McGarvie, chatting to Beat amid post-work drinks at the pub. “It keeps me on my feet. The better you can teach something, the better you can probably do it. And the reverse is true as well. Having said that, of late there are definitely times where I’m thinking, ‘I don’t want to be teaching this eight-year-old how to play the drums when I’m meant to be preparing for an album launch.’ ”
Time wasting eight-year-olds aside, it’s McGarvie’s lifelong dream to play music full time. “Since I first started playing music when I was probably ten or 12, I loved it,” he says. “After my dreams of a cricket career died – when I realised I wasn’t any good – I thought, ‘Well, I still have music. Might as well turn to that.’ ”
McGarvie quickly adapted to the unique pleasures and pains of performing live. Even when he was young, stepping under the bright lights was never a stressful experience. “Stopping short of calling myself an overeager little kid, I loved performing,” McGarvie laughs. “I still love performing. I think it’s really great. These days it’s more about seeing other people enjoying what you’re doing and creating a vibe in the room by playing. That makes it a really great thing to do. It’s people in the same room at the same having a great time and you can’t go past that.”
McGarvie’s teaching career has helped him understand the importance of being flexible when it comes to choosing a set list. “The experience I’ve had teaching makes you understand how to be very malleable in those situations,” he says. “You can change up the show a tiny bit if you realise, ‘Oh, the ballads aren’t working, maybe I’ll try the up tunes.’ ”
That level of confidence and malleability is apparent all across Not Soon Enough, a rollicking collection of blues-indebted tunes. The term ‘anthemic’ might be a cliché among music writers, but it’s genuinely the best way to describe some of McGarvie’s work.
Yet despite the record’s thick pop gloss, there’s also a degree of darkness to the piece. A song like Darling I Hope You’re Well rattles along with a curious mix of anger and tragedy, McGarvie’s soulful voice fraying at the edges as he sings lines about “listing what’s wrong with you and us.”
“It’s a funny thing with writing music,” McGarvie says. “Often you get inspired to write something when you’re feeling the pangs of some kind of emotion. And that can come out lyrically. But [knowing] you want to play songs that people can dance to, or rock out to, can mean you can have a sad thing with a really up, sort of rocky tune about it and it really works. Music is a really great medium for expressing all sorts of facets of your interest.”
Ultimately for McGarvie, music isn’t just a job, and it’d be trivialising to even call it a hobby. It’s more like a way of communicating: not only to the outside world, but to himself. “I think one of the best things you can do is write down things you’re feeling, if you’re battling with something. When you write it in a song you can sing it back to yourself and think, ‘Yeah that was a really difficult time but because I sang through it now I have a much better understanding of how it shaped me.’ ”
BY JOSEPH EARP
