Lucky and I experiment a lot: Mikey McCleary

It’s been more than two decades since their first album together (Sunoh; 1996) was released, and yet the music never stops whenever composer-singer Mikey McCleary gets together with long-time collaborator, singer-songwriter Lucky Ali.

“It’s like a jam session. Strum some chords. Sing some tunes. Find a hook. Maybe a groove. The route you take each time is different and you end up in a different place. We experiment a lot. Sometimes it’s fast, sometimes we rework a track many, many times. At some point you say, here it is,” shares McCleary, who reunited with Ali for a series of singles, the first one being Intezaar, which was released recently.

In an earlier interview, Ali had mentioned the upcoming compilation is about the idea of higher love. While McCleary insists he doesn’t have the “same connection to the cosmos that Lucky has”, he shares he doesn’t need to look for too many meanings behind his composition.

“Music in itself is enough for me. I don’t need to add too many additional metaphoric layers, but it’s good that he has his inspiration and I have mine. The thread is our collaboration of sound and melody, plus Lucky’s voice and the thoughts that come through in his lyrics,” says the musician, who hails from New Zealand.

“A good collaboration is not necessarily always easy. We frequently disagree and battle it out to find moments and expressions that we both really like. It takes some friction to create something unique,” adds McCleary.

The Margarita with a Straw (2014) composer shares that the current growth of non-film music reminds him of “how it was here in India in the late ’90s”. “It’s encouraging that a growing audience of music lovers are looking to indie music for the artistic integrity and originality that it offers,” he signs off.