Images shot by @vuyopolson (@polestudios)

In times of hardship, finding yourself among those who share your passion can be one of the most comforting and healing experiences.

For some time, I had watched the band steadily grow within the Cape Town music scene, drawing listeners in through their captivating sound. I had the pleasure of seeing them perform once, not knowing that I’d eventually have a chat with the crew. It wasn’t until I met Jesse Lees that we had the chance to briefly get to know each other and make this happen. I still remember leaving with a free we’re alright sticker as a small but memorable reminder of that moment.

The link-up finally came together just before their show at The House Of Machines, giving us the chance to dive into the band’s origins, explore the unique sound that drew listeners in and the messaging behind it, their latest project “i think not”, and more.

To get things rolling with this interview, let’s have a quickfire round. Could you tell me who you are, what your role is in the band, and a musician that influenced your choice in becoming a musician yourself?

Corey:“My name is Corey. I play the guitar, and I make some noise. For me, I would actually say Bob Dylan.”

Ziev:“Hi, I’m Ziev, and I sing. As of recently, I’ve used a vocal effects pedal, which is why it’s so good as well (laughter from the band). Damn, I’m struggling to think of a musician…”

Jesse: “I know your answer. It’s got to be Stevie Wonder.”

Ziev:“Aaah, yes, yes of course…”

Jesse:“Now you’ve got to say my answer when it comes to me.”(laughter from the band)

Kris: “Hi, my name is Kris. I play drums for now, but I'm currently on my way out of the band, and this will be my second-to-last show.”

“But I think “Jammin” by Stevie Wonder would definitely be up there for me, as well as Stewart Copeland, The Police, TOOL, and Torture.”

Jack: “I'm Jack, and I'm the bassist. I think proportionally, what made me want to play bass was Hugh Masekela.”

Ziev: “Isn't there a Dua Lipa connection?”

Jack: “When I first started playing bass, I wasn't good enough to play Hugh Masekela, so I played Dua Lipa.” (band laughs)

Anees: “I'm Anees, and I play the sax for the band. I also play a little bit of bass and guitar.”

Ziev:“One day, we will get him to sing too.” (laughter)

Anees:Yeah, my influences are so many I couldn't just choose one, you know. I like music from all over, and We're Alright is just a cool opportunity to try new stuff for me.”

Jesse:“I'm Jesse, the guitarist and vocalist. Ziev, what's my answer, bro?”

Ziev:“I know you love mild orange or something? But I'd say something like Tom Misch?”

Jesse:“Yeah, Tom Misch, Rex Orange County, and I'd like to say Anderson Paak, but I don't feel like I'm cool enough.”

Ben:“My name is Benjamin Botha, but please call me Ben. Benjamin is way too formal. I've been playing drums for pretty much half my life. I've been on the music scene for the past 12 years and have been in nearly 30 different bands. Mostly, I've been operating as a session drummer around Cape Town.”

“I am the newest drummer for we're alright, and I also help with the music development side of things. I come from a musical family, so I would say my father (Jazz guitarist) and my brother (Jazz pianist and Double bassist) are my biggest inspirations. And then, of course, I was jazz-trained at the beginning and used that to shape my musical creativity. I never looked back from when I started, back when I was 13.”

How was we're alright birthed and how do you feel like your band represents the Indie scene or culture in Cape Town?

Jesse:“I don't know how it came together at first. It was either the joke of being up on stage and telling people that we’re alright, but for me, it's become quite the manifestation of when we all play together, it's a space, no matter what's going on in my life, any bad shit or good shit, that all gets blocked out when I'm on stage with the band.”

“We'd like that to resonate with our listeners. Whenever they listen to the music, they can resonate with the message, take something away from it, and it's alright…it's not that bad.”

“In terms of Cape Town and how we fit into the city…”

Ziev:“Cape Town and any scene, it's the same. Depending on the scene and the gigs that we have done, everything I've enjoyed, depending on what lineup we get into, I feel like we can shift a bit.”

“We've played at the Blue Room a couple of times. That was like a 3-hour set, and we had to dig deep into our Jazzy side, but at the same time, we've wanted to play sets with SIDEPIECE and Petrol Station Pies, and that's on the heavier side.”

Jack:“Kaya Cafe has been huge for us, though. It's how we got to play one of our first gigs in Cape Town and how we met and got to work with all these other bands and artists.”

“We had our first gig way out in George in an empty restaurant.”

Corey: “Which is the best place to start out! If you mess up, you're never gonna see those people again.”

Jesse:“Yeah, Kaya has done a lot for us, teaching us to be professional in the way we move, they've given us opportunities to play at Up The Creek twice, and even helped us out with our EPK…”

Ziev: “And how to wrap up our cables professionally. I think Brad would like us to say that (laughter)”

Kris:“This whole thing has taught us the difference between being a musical group and a band.”

“It's taught us how to be a group and how to navigate a space like this. It can be really intimidating starting out, you know? It's hard booking places, and you never know if you're good enough to play in those places you're playing in. But you realize everyone enjoys music just as much as you do, and everything opens up after that.”

There's quite a lot of you in this band. How did you all find each other to create the band?

Ziev:“‘Where’ is the good question? I remember the first place Jesse, Kris, and I jammed out was my current place, but at the time, I didn't even have a bed base.”

“I hardly had anything in my cupboards, and the room itself was bare minimum.”

Jesse:“Ziev and I had always been making music together, and we always wanted to get other people to help contribute towards that, and we found Kris, who had never played drums with anyone before, but he smashed it.”

“We met Jack because he was dating my friend Tallulah, and I remember we met at a group thing, and he asked me how the music thing was going. I remember telling him we got a drummer and now needed a bass player, which he told me he could do, which was cool.”

“We started practicing in Tallulah's garage after that, shoutout Tallulah. Corey was subletting, living upstairs from Tallulah's mom.”

Jack:“We had no idea that this absolute beast of a guitarist was living upstairs the whole time. Then he came down and played with us, and we were like, "Holy shit. We need this guy in the band".”

Corey:“I was so drunk when you guys asked me to join the band. I was literally coming home from a bender, and the boys asked me, which I thought was great.”

Jesse: “And with Anees, Kris found him wandering around Up The Creek last year.”

Jack:“But this guy is wicked on the saxophone.”

Ben: “I met all the members a few times at various gigs, especially at Up the creek2025. They always spoke of doing a show together with my other band, Pink + Yellow. Largely, the reason I'm in so many bands is that I've been running a jam session at Striped Horse for over three years.”

“But to answer in short, we're alright’s drummer wanted to leave the band. I was chatting to Jesse about auditioning, and not long after, I auditioned and made it into the band. I booked us at The Commons to play alongside Pink + Yellow. Played drums twice that night, and the rest is history.”

I'm aware your music blends many different genres. How would you guys describe your sound as a genre?

Ziev: “There's a level of understanding our blend. Jesse, I think you said Indie-Pop-Rock?”

Jesse: “Yeah…”

Kris: “I think it's kind of important with your music that you don't need to have a genre, but you need to have…”

Anees: “I think it just has to be its own thing.”

You guys all have different genre tastes. Is this the reason why we're alright's sound is so blended?”

Jack: “Oh yeah, we all have different tastes in music, and we all have different musical backgrounds, and we bring all that stuff together.”

“The songwriting thing of it definitely gives it that Indie feel, but we also hit the hard rock. Kris is big into hard Rock; I'm more into funk and jazz, while Anees is into basically everything.”

Congrats on the new project release, “i think not”. What's the response been like from the people so far?

Jack: “My gran is chuffed, she's pumping that shit” (band laughs)

Ziev: “My one colleague said that he really loves it and that he'll be playing it to his wife so she can listen to it on Valentine's Day, so that she can listen to the lyrics because he doesn't. I appreciate his honesty, though…”

Jack: “And it's worth listening to the lyrics. Ziev and Jesse write everything together. The most recent songs the band has been writing together have been more of a group effort as well.”

Ziev: “Jesse writes everything else. I wrote the song “prickly pair” besides the one line, but most of the time Jesse and I will sit together and work together on what sounds good.”

Jack: “They're the engines of it all.”

Kris: “We make up the rest of the car.”

How long was the process behind making the project?

Jesse:“The EP took us about a year to make. We started recording last year for a different project, which didn't work out, and we didn't record in the way that we wanted to.”

“We started focusing on “prickly pair”, “happily unknown”, and “i think not”, we had the former two out and then put the rest of the 5 as an EP.”

“We felt like we could thread it in a way that each song told one story. They're all their own stories, but to make it a piece of art, we made it into one.”

Ziev:“The funny thing about “prickly pair” was that it was the first song we released, but the most recent song we had written, and the only song at that time that we had written together as a band. We were trying out the chords and trying the Radiohead ‘creep’ chord and stuff like that.”

With a process like that and having so many of you in this band, how do you manage the complexities of working together and making sure everyone comes together as one?

Jesse: "Like Ziev said, by the time we got the band together, we had about ten or twelve songs written in terms of lyrics, structure, and the chords ready.”

Jack:“You guys even had a folder with all the chord sheets in it.”

Jesse: “Yeah. And obviously, when we got the band together, we knew this was what we wanted to create as a band, and I would hope that everyone could find their own way to bring it together.”

“So it's more for them to find how to manage the space. For me, I'd say it wasn't challenging because these were the songs. Some of the newer songs that we've been writing together were a completely collaborative process, but in terms of our earlier songs, it's been really fun, really great, and I feel we get along really well. I'm not sure how Jack, Anees, or Corey experiences it.”

Jack:“I think bass is an easy one. You've got a structure to work with and the chords to follow. If you listen to the songs without the chords playing, you can definitely hear the space underneath it, and you gotta figure out how best to give the song that drive and to merge with the drums and to give the song that bit of momentum.”

“Whatever else I can fit in there is cool, and I can just do some things wherever space allows it. You've got to do it, and you've got to be tasteful about it. So that part is a lot straightforward to me.”

What sort of emotion or what message do you want listeners to experience after listening to your music?

Jesse: “To me, the way that this EP has come together, it starts with a story of being in love and that not working out, and it ends with actually understanding the unpredictability of the future and enjoying it rather.”

“All those lyrics and stories are real lived experiences. I would like people to just listen to that and to feel the feelings.”

“By the end of it, you'll be alright. Love and heartbreak are experiences. You'll experience it in a way, and everyone experiences it differently. What is certain is that at the end of the day, you'll get through it.”

Corey: “Yeah, man, that’s what the Buddha says.”

Jesse: “Which I don’t necessarily believe sometimes. When I was writing “i think not” with Ziev, I was going through a breakup. I didn't think I was going to be okay, but in writing it, I was manifesting that I would be okay, and the process would help me eventually become okay.”

Ziev: “I was going to say, quite a few of the songs were intended to be cathartic to the situation we were in at the time. Especially us who get more involved with the lyrics, we think about the message of it and what we’re trying to communicate, someone could also be going through that exact same journey.”

“What I really love about quite a few of the songs that we’ve made is there’s a bit of a journey through them. If you listen to the lyrics of “happily unknown”, each chorus has a bit of a change in the lyrics, and eventually you hear how I’ve grown and how I’ve changed. Hopefully, people can have that feeling, and even a part of that would make me happy.”

“That’s the magic of music, man!”

To close this chat off, what’s your view on the Capetonian creative landscape?

Corey:“I feel like I really appreciate the Cape Town scene. There have been many experiences that I have had. You sort of have to push yourself out there in the start, but once you're in there, there's a strong sense of community and people actually look out for each other.”

“I’m sure there are darker parts as well, but I’ve really had fun in the past year or so. There is a strong community, and bands do want to see each other doing well. Even the bigger bands want to see the new young bands get in, do well, play alongside them, and there is this drive to grow the scene.”

Ben: “There's obviously a great deal of talent. But it's a tough scene to stand out. Being an indie/punk/rock band is simply not enough. You've got to do it all and play it all. I've used jazz as a secret weapon to create something unique for myself. So I don't enjoy classifying myself into one single genre. You need to be playing with many musicians, and you need to constantly be challenging yourself for what you think is possible.”

“The jam sessions that I've run have informed a lot of my views, but the one thing in particular that I'd like to voice is that many musicians and bands are clueless in the beginning. And it's not a bad thing, it just means there needs to be more support and help mentoring those who need it. So I think that collaborating and helping each other to grow. Like bands forming shows together, creating their own events, etc., will make music more lively, more noticeable, and more successful. It's not about one kind of genre, but it's about cultivating and sharing the space of learning and creativity.”

Jesse:“Coming from Up The Creek, we’ve met a lot of bands who are in a similar place like us. They could be a little bit higher or even a bit lower, but there’s just this real sense of camaraderie, and they’re all my friends, and we’re very supportive of each other.”

Jack:“It’s beautiful to see. I feel like, because I’m now in the scene, that it really feels strong, and it feels like it's growing. There are amazing artists in this town, and walking away from Up The Creek is when I had this mental list of all the bands I want to play with. And I will say it again, shoutout to Kaya Cafe. They are such an important place to bridge artists who are just starting to become musicians, wanting to go further. They are so important to the Cape Town scene.”

“At the end of the day, it is still Cape Town, and it can be difficult with the cliqueness and gatekeeping. But we’re not afraid to knock on doors, and we’re not afraid to be authentic. We’re not here to fuck spiders.”

Corey:“Fuck spiders???” (laughter)

Jack:“Yeah, you know what I mean?”

Ziev: “He always says that. I guess we’re also very thankful that Jesse is very good at organizing things and keeping things going. Because of that, there’s an extra advantage for us now putting on our own events. I look back at having such excitement for the Halloween show (All Hallows Eve) we put on. I say we, but that was all Jesse.”

Jack:“Jesse’s a one-man army!”

Ziev:“There’s a lot of power that comes from that. I think that having to prove yourself means that you have to answer to other people’s opinions of you, as opposed to trying to find your way and putting yourself out there. I think that’s the best way to sort of insist on themselves, and for me, the way to get out there is to show people that you don't only care about the music, but you care enough about it because you want to put on your own events. You want to do that, and you want to bring other artists with you. You want to commit to the bit.”

Jesse:“If you want to break into the Cape Town scene, you’ve got to do it yourself. Use the camaraderie and any other thing. Use whatever you can. If three bands are passionate enough to put an event together, do it. You just have to commit, and it’s a very easy thing to do.”

“I don’t think everyone who came to see us at All Hallows Eve even knew of us or even liked us, but we just pushed it hard. You have way more friends in the scene than you think you do.”

The lads from we’re alright clearly share a strong connection - something that became obvious throughout our conversation. The banter never stopped flowing, and it was genuinely refreshing to see how naturally they bounced off one another and kept each other laughing.

There’s a chemistry between them that feels effortless, and it’s exactly that kind of bond that gives you confidence they’re capable of going far and creating something special within the Cape Town scene. If this conversation was anything to go by, these guys are more than alright - they’re building something worth paying attention to.

For now, peep their latest EP release, “i think not”, and keep an eye out for what more they have developing within the South African scene.

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