JAKEB SMITH asks a fairly innocuous question of Sydney roots band KING TIDE, and gets a surprisingly vitriolic – and awesome – response. We like to imagine this happens frequently.

Roots Pop Reggae is the fourth longplayer from Sydney artists King Tide. It’s a coolly mixed and mastered affair, densely layering its myriad roots and reggae influences under the slick hooks and concise songwriting of pop. The result is a record that satisfies the needs of revellers and quiet contemplators both – and does so with a whole lot of authentic swagger.

JAKEB SMITH: Is singing in an accent strange? Or is that how you learnt to sing initially?

KING TIDE: And what accent is that? Is that the same accent that Mick Jagger and Tex Perkins appropriate? You know the one, don’t you? That swaggering rootsy southern drawl that countless millions of singers use to help suggest colour to what might sometimes be a hollow narrative.

Or is it the faux-posh pop London accent favoured by Bowie in his Hunky Dory and Space Oddity period? An accent Bowie appropriated from Anthony Newly. The same accent that Jarvis Cocker and a generation of prosaic pop appropriated from Bowie. It happened round the time pop was gorging on itself – the nineties.

Then you have in the same nineties period the very popular accent of the Seattle slow growled grunge ballad. Or is it the accent that the English liked in Northern Soul? What I call the sweet rhyme accent of Smokey Robinson or Jackie Wilson. Maybe it’s the pure ring of Curtis Mayfield’s falsetto. A falsetto favoured by the rock steady vocal groups of the Studio One era in Trench Town Jamaica.

Which accent could it be? Are you talking about the overly stated vowels of the contemporary Australian hip hop artist? A sound that marries first generation Lebanese with the lilt of a cove that has just stepped from the convict ship in Sydney circa 1788?

To coin a well-worn cliché. A singer’s voice is an instrument which ideally can be used to make many different sounds or if you like accents.

Just like a guitar can play in a blues accent or a jazz accent or a funk accent or a country accent. Or an operatic accent, which can be German or Italian or whatever, the piece requires. Next time you interview Nick Cave ask him if he has always sang using the theatre that comes from the accent he appropriated from a white Southern Baptist sixth-generation German minister.

KING TIDE play Joe’s Waterhole, Friday Jun 19 and The Zoo Saturday Jun 20 with Dubmarine; and The Beach Hotel, Sunday Jun 21. ROOTS POP REGGAE is out now through Vitamin. www.myspace.com/kingtidesydney

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