“Natural” moves at walking pace, a lovers rock groove kept soft under Clarence Bekker‘s blues-trained voice as it eases across the rocksteady sway. The new single from his Barcelona band is a plain love song from a singer with a long, loud history behind him.

Bekker carries an unusual CV for a reggae singer: a UK chart entry in the 1990s as CB Milton, seven world tours, and a spell fronting the street-recorded Playing For Change project. Born in Suriname and raised in the Netherlands from the age of six, he cut his teeth in the Dutch group Swinging Soul Machine before that dance-pop run, then settled in Barcelona and, in 2016, built a band around local players.

That band is a five-piece of Barcelona regulars: guitarist Francisco Guisado, known as Rubio, keyboardist Arecio Smith, bassist Charlie Cuevas and drummer Carlos López behind Bekker’s vocals. They hold a weekly Thursday residency at the jazz club Jamboree and have carried the same lineup as far as Australia and Brazil.

The song came together between Barcelona and the road, Bekker recording while Irish lyricist Michael Leahy sent words over from wherever he was travelling, a habit going back to their fax-machine days writing CB Milton hits together in the 90s. Everyone in the band had a hand in it, and it holds to the idea in its title: an unhurried love song, played the easy way. It is the first single from an album due later this year.

Listen to “Natural” HERE