Premiere: Moses Unveil New Single 'Greater Than Me' (+ Interview)

Wellington-born psychedelic pop band Moses are lifting the lid off gorgeous new tune 'Greater Than Me', the first song the four-piece recorded after relocating to Berlin a few months ago. The swirling tune was laid down while the group were living in a tent acclimatising to their new home, and as good fortune would have it the opportunity to record in a brick and mortar building landed in their collective laps out of the blue. Take a listen to 'Greater Than Me' and scroll down to read our interview with bandmember Teyler Hayes (drums, vocals), who fills us in on the band's new home, his chance meeting with an Iron Maiden guitarist, and their upcoming tour of Japan and South Korea...

Hi Moses!! So you guys have recently relocated to Berlin, what was behind that decision?

Hello! Yes, that is correct. We’ve been in Berlin since May and we are having a lovely time! Most of us grew up in Ashburton, and we had been based in Wellington for a while and wanted to experience something new I guess. We thought about Auckland, Melbourne, Bangkok, Tokyo, Barcelona… but after arriving in Berlin it quickly felt like somewhere we could build a sustainable and enjoyable lifestyle. It’s cheap, you can drink on the street… etc etc! Quite pathetically, our favourite living musician lives here, which probably had more of an impact on our decision than I’m proud of hahaha. But it’s cool, we saw him spin some vinyl at a local bar a few weeks ago. He was like, five metres away from me, just sucking back a durry and playing Crosby, Stills and Nash. Crazy. It was like if teenage me was five metres away from Matt Bellamy from MUSE or something. “He” is Anton Newcombe [of Brian Jonestown Massacre], and I guess being able to write the sentence “we saw him spin some vinyl at a local bar a few weeks ago” is regrettably, but also kinda unashamedly what was behind the decision for us to relocate to Berlin!

What’s been the most challenging thing about settling in to your new home as a band?

A lot of New Zealanders come to Berlin, so a lot of people will know what I mean when I say getting our documents in order and getting an apartment for longer than a few weeks has been a hell of a process! And the amount of effort and time we’ve had to put in to that has restricted our ability to record and write new material, which has been quite frustrating at times. But happily, we now have a long-term contract on an apartment, all our documents, jobs, a practice space, the lot! Our German is still horrible, but we get by ok. We started in a car, then we upgraded to a tent for a couple of weeks, then we were in a one bedroom apartment (there are four of us)… So as you can imagine, having a bed in a room with a door that you close, as opposed to a squab on a floor next to your ginger-headed mate snoring away, feels pretty nice!

En route to Berlin you guys undertook a pretty epic tour. Can you tell us a little about that? Highlights?

The Berlin bureaucracy probably would’ve just about driven us over the edge if it wasn’t for the two months of touring leading up to our arrival here, which was bloody fun. We started out in Australia with a standard three-date tour, before popping in to Japan, South Korea, China, three weeks in the UK and then another three weeks driving through France, Spain, Austria and Belgium. We played about 30 shows along the way, ranging from pretty damn poor, to pretty damn incredible. The incredible nights far outnumbered the poor ones, and things were mostly well attended which was a surprise! The highlight by far was meeting a genuine 80s rock star at our Paris show, and not even realising… I thought we played pretty well that night, and there was a cool looking, grey-haired man at the back, just knocking back beers and laughing and shouting random things at us in French between songs. I assumed he was French, so tried to have a conversation with him in French after the show about how much I like chocolate (I don’t speak French). He seemed pretty amused by me, and didn’t really say anything, but he was really nice and the vibes were good. I later found out from the bar owner that the grey-haired man I was talking to had to bail because people were catching on to who he is. Naturally I was like “oh, wtf, who was that guy???” It was Janick Gers from Iron Maiden. I’m an idiot.

Today you are sharing new song ‘Greater Than Me’. How did this track come together?

Recording this song was pretty much the first thing we did when we got to Berlin. Pretty sure we were still living in a tent at this point! A lovely Finnish man approached us after our first Berlin show and said he enjoyed the music, he is an audio engineering student and that we should record with him. We literally had nothing else to do, and having a reason that didn’t cost money to be inside an actual building for a few hours, and not a tent, was pretty attractive. Risto became a good friend, and did an amazing job with the recording. He studies at DBS which is based in the old East Germany Radio Station, which I’m pretty sure was mainly used for Soviet Propaganda back in the day, so it was pretty cool to record in there.

When I sat down to write the song itself I intended for it to be a light-hearted, fun, nursery rhyme kinda thing for my newly born nephew, as I was staying with my family for Christmas at the time. But then as it developed it turned into a quite emotional track about my own failures at being an adult and my desire to do better for the people in my life I guess! Probably a bit of a cheesy back story. This whole thing probably has a bit of a cheesy element to it. Oh well. Maybe most people will just listen to the track and not even bother with the interview anyway haha. I could probably say anything!!

What’s on the cards for Moses for the rest of the year?

We’re off to Japan for a festival in Osaka and a few shows in Tokyo next week, before a mini-tour of South Korea and a festival In Seoul at the end of the month. Hopefully we’ll have album 3 complete by the end of the year, and a few shows here in Germany. Other than that, probably trying to stay out of trouble and keep a roof over our heads - just like everyone else.