Back To The World
New Street Adventure
Feature Interview
“Did-did-did-deee, did-did-did-doo-doooh.”
The gentle sway of a vintage ’70s soul number begins. Band leader and frontman Nick Corbin wears jeans turned up at the bottom, Adidas Gazelles and a short-sleeved chequered shirt with a rockabilly-style turned-down collar. His pastel-pink Fender Telecaster hangs from his shoulder as he leans into the mic and sings: “Whatever happened to the day we met on new streets…” altering the wistful Four Tops classic “Main Street People” to reference the live return of his band, New Street Adventure, formed nearly two decades before.
“All we ever wanted to do was sing and dance,” he continues, his unique, mod-inflected, white-skinned, Anglo-Saxon soul delivery contrasting with the Black-American operatic tones once voiced by Levi Stubbs. “Maybe we could go back again and look for New Street.”
A minute-and-a-half intro set the stage for a tour last year – to mark the tenth anniversary of the band’s debut album and fan favourite, No Hard Feelings on Acid Jazz – a comeback few had expected, least of all Corbin. Having formed New Street Adventure while at university in Birmingham, the realities of distance and time meant many original members were no longer in London or no longer playing music. Guitarist Billy Barr and backing vocalist Carmy Love rejoined briefly but ultimately the line-up is interchangeable behind Corbin, who – like Jay Kay with Jamiroquai – was always front and centre, writing the songs and leading the group.
“I guess I always wanted it to be a band making joint decisions,” says Corbin, as we take refuge from one of the hottest days of the year in a café called Saint Espresso in East London. He sips his drink, the ice clinking, whilst smooth jazz plays in the background. “Essentially it was me organising the rehearsals, the gigs, the social media and everything. I grew tired of that. I needed that interim experience of playing with different people and figuring out what I wanted to do. And now it’s come full circle. I wanted to return as ‘Nick Corbin plays the music of New Street Adventure’, but my promoter thought it would sell better as New Street Adventure.”
Corbin hadn’t taken the decision lightly. “Might seem a bit ruthless,” he admits of reviving the name without the original line-up, with a wry chuckle, “but yeah…”
“I miss my old life… and then, ‘Oh my God, this is the best thing ever!’”
What began as a one-off tour has since yielded a new album, What Kind of World? – the third under the New Street Adventure monicker, once again on Acid Jazz. “It’s really nice,” says Corbin, having returned after releasing a solo album Sweet Escape on Big AC Records, a soul music label he established with his missus. “I’d probably been thinking of doing the album on Big AC, but then me and my wife found out we had another baby on the way. So, I approached Acid Jazz and they said yes.”
It’s easy to see why. Corbin’s music sits in the Goldilocks zone of everything Eddie Piller and Dean Rudland have always espoused, musically: devotion to rare groove, funky soul and jazz – the bedrock of the ’90s Acid Jazz sound – fused with the clobber-conscious mod revival of Paul Weller’s music. More than any other homegrown artist – be it Mother Earth, the Brand New Heavies, JTQ or Jamiroquai – Corbin has become the poster boy for the label’s ethos.
He connects the dots like stations on a tube map: the feelgood sweetness of ’70s crossover soul – the songs of Brian Potter & Dennis Lambert, the Four Tops, Tavares & Main Ingredient – and the lyrical prose of Smokey Robinson or Curtis Mayfield, all filtered through the everyday grind of two pints of lager, pork scratchings and last orders.
The new record – arguably Corbin and the band’s finest work – refracts that heritage through his experiences as a father of two. Of the sombre title track, “What Kind Of World?” which paints a bleak but forthright picture of the world his children are entering, Corbin explains: “I wanted it to sort of be like a Curtis Mayfield opener – have the moody feel to it, but still with hope in the chorus. The scream on the bridge, with all the reverb, that was meant to be a bit like “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Gonna Go.””
Fatherhood is a recurring theme. Whilst the songs celebrate the joy of being a dad, they’re not afraid to broach the struggle either – it’s not all “Isn’t She Lovely”. On the uptempo, Leroy Hutson-esque “Get You Back”, the lyric closes with an image of his son banging his hands on the window as Corbin runs home. “I’m a second-time dad now,” he says. “My son’s two and a half. My daughter is 11 weeks. As a dad, I found the first six months or so after our son was born really tough. Especially the first few weeks where you’re like, I miss my old life, and it’s a struggle to bond. But then it’s also that celebration of like, ‘Oh my God, this is the best thing that’s ever happened!’ I wanted to explore all the different sides.”
“The scream on the bridge was meant to be like Curtis.”
One of the album’s highlights is the slow jam “Busy With My Baby” – a track you could imagine Peter Powell announcing on Top of the Pops, the camera sweeping across the crowd as the flute trips on memory bliss, fuzz guitar embellishes and the backing singers coo alluringly. Corbin stands centre stage, Style-Council-ing it out – fiddling with the mic cord, chewing gum – before supplying a nonchalant vocal with clarity and rasp.
Open to interpretation, many would assume the song to be romantic, but the baby is literal – anticipating the birth of his son, a sanctuary from the stresses of a hard day’s night. “We were in the middle of this Big AC Records tour,” Corbin recalls. “Emma Noble, Carmy Love, Abi Farrell, all on the same bill. We were in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, and it had been a bit of a hard gig” – a packed local “lanky” crowd, but one unfamiliar with the revue’s music.
“I ended up with a hotel room on my own. Our son was due in December, and I just had this feeling – I can’t wait to be done with this and be busy with my baby. The melody came, I spoke a couple of lines into my phone. A year later, when I was putting songs together for the album, I remembered it again.”
It’s a comfortable song for Corbin to sing, easy on the ferret & stoat. “Because I sung it low at the beginning, it’s almost like spoken word – it’s quite nice just to not be belting it out every song. I’ve probably been guilty of that in previous recordings. This one takes it down a notch.”
Recorded at the Cube in London – a small rehearsal space with vintage gear – the sound is direct and intimate. “They only had four mics,” Corbin recalls, “but the drum sound really… it was just right.” The jam at the end was unplanned. “Our keyboard player, Sahil Batra, was just like – why don’t we pretend we’re ending it and then kick back in.”
Thae spontaneity was provided by a core of first-call players: Sahil Batra on keys, Terry Lewis of Mamas Gun on guitar across five tracks, Luke Rattenbury on bass, Ben Reed on drums, and Carmy Love on backing vocals. Together, they gave What Kind of World? A balance of grit and finesse, that still left space for Corbin’s voice and stories.
“It’s a bit of a tearjerker for me.”
The fuzz guitar, low in the mix, hints at the sweetness of the Chi-Lites, a group Corbin grew up on. “My dad always used to play that stuff,” he says. He inherited his love of soul from his pops – the original “Big AC”. The label took its name from New Street Adventure’s biggest tune, itself a tribute to Adrian Corbin, a DJ, radio presenter and Johnnie Taylor fanatic whose book 208 Fabulous Records – My Soulful Life is a sought-after tome. Soul runs in the family: his wife Sophie Heath, with whom he runs Big AC, is also one half of renowned DJ duo Noble & Heath (alongside Emma Noble – an artist in her own right who also features on the album).
With its string-drenched middle eight and Hammond organ, “Too Good Together” is, in Corbin’s words, “a lush arrangement in the style of Curtis Mayfield, with flutes, brass and strings.” Think uptown soul, Chi-town productions – “Claudine’s Theme” by Gladys Knight & The Pips, Aretha’s “Look Into Your Heart” or Leroy Hutson’s “So In Love With You”. “That’s the only vocal I recorded at home,” he says. “I couldn’t get it better in the studio.”
The 6/8 sway of “The Next Chapter” – once even considered as an album title (“A bit too twee,” says Corbin) – recalls the killer “Foolish Once More” from their debut, but with added maturity & girth. Known for his poetic touch, Corbin drops bookish metaphors aplenty, including:
“I’m a sucker for all the suspense; there’s no temptation to skip to the end” – showing how deeply he has studied soul wordsmiths like Eddie Holland and Smokey Robinson.
“Oh, I love Smokey,” he says. “I really got into him in my 20s at uni.” He name-checks Robinson’s rare production for Brenda Holloway, “My Baby Moves Me”, adding: “Oh, and “I’ll Try Something New”, that’s a real favourite of mine.” Writes Smokey: Every day, we can play, on the Milky Way / and if that don’t do, I’ll try something new. “I love those little bits of imagery,” he adds. “Smokey’s always in the back of my mind.”
“That simplicity really stuck with me.”
Another influence came from contemporary Aaron Frazer of Durand Jones & The Indications, whose “Flower Moon” on Colemine Records, Corbin calls “one of the most beautiful songs.” Frazer asked him to accompany him on a couple of radio sessions. “I was nervous,” Corbin admits with refreshing honesty. “I see myself as a singer-songwriter more than a guitarist. But he was great. He just wanted someone to keep time. It taught me a lot. And I love songs like “Bad News” – two chords all the way through. That simplicity really stuck with me.”
Frazer also recommended Rafferty Swink as mixing engineer. “Rafferty exceeded any expectations I had,” says Corbin. Swink’s mixes combine intimacy with weight – no mean feat, bringing out the best of Corbin’s production.
Tired of provoking a backlash, Corbin avoids being too overtly political, though the flood of AI releases pushed him to speak out. “Everyone’s a Music Maker” nods to the Zutons’ sloppy, P-Funk-inspired “You Will You Won’t”, though its stop-start rhythm betrays Main Street People-era Four Tops (“Are You Man Enough”). “The first line was about an Apple advert I saw,” he explains. “These people going, ‘Look how we made our new single – we just went da-da-da into the mic and put it through this software.’ Anyone could do that. And now, because anyone can, the market is saturated. It’s mad.”
Corbin has no interest in AI songwriting. “I’d never be tempted. The only thing I’d use it for is posters maybe – that’s if the wife can’t do it.” He laughs. “But for writing songs? No chance. There are bands now, AI bands, with record deals. I can’t believe it. It’s just sad that people want to listen to that when there’s so much lovingly created music out there.”
“Whatever Northern Soul is, it shouldn’t be that.”
“A Taste of Love” turns its gaze to the physical realm. “It’s a commentary on the state of the soul scene in the UK,” says Corbin. NSA’s video for their aforementioned monster, “The Big AC” featured Northern Soul dancer Levanna McLean. “It was an ode to the joy and open-mindedness of the soul scene, which I felt welcomed young recruits so warmly when I first started going to all-nighters.” But after posting the video, Corbin couldn’t believe the trolling McLean faced. The lyric “little snakes in the grass” was a nod to Northern Soul’s “The Snake” by Al Wilson. “Sometimes I find myself reading it out of disbelief. People saying you’re not allowed unless you dance right, or play original vinyl, or smile the right way. But to me, Northern Soul isn’t about that.”
Later, at one of Sophie’s DJ sets, he watched the crowd only get up for Ann Sexton’s “You’ve Been Gone Too Long”, clapping and then sitting down again. “She was playing some cool stuff with no reaction, then after “You’ve Been Gone Too Long” finished, she put something else on and it cleared the floor. Watching it, I thought – whatever Northern Soul is, it shouldn’t be that. It’s not that.”
Just as Corbin’s solo album did, What Kind Of World? ends with a stripped-back acoustic piece. “When I See You With Him” is one of the most moving moments, the family thread running right through. It’s about his mum, who hasn’t been well, and seeing her interact with his son. Midway through, his boy can be heard: “I love you, Nana.” Recorded on a phone with the melody played on a toy xylophone. “It’s a bit of a tearjerker for me, a nice way to end the record,” says Corbin, whose appreciation of his son’s work doesn’t quite extend to cutting him in on the split. “Royalties? Yeah…” he says, before quickly realising what he’s just agreed to. “No wait, I don’t know about that!” He laughs. “He’s got a credit on there.”