Ciaran McMeeken is sipping a bottle of beer.
It's a brew made just a few hundred metres down the road from his parents' boutique hotel, The Brothers, where the view is dominated by St Joseph's Cathedral, which looms gloriously a stone's throw across Rattray St.
Yet McMeeken is more interested in talking about a two-storeyed house next to the hotel.
There - specifically, in a bedroom within the family abode - the Arrowtown, then Dunedin-raised singer-songwriter began a metamorphosis from sports-mad teen to tunesmith.
Having attended Otago Boys' High School, McMeeken spent a year in England playing club cricket (an opening batsman, he gained a scholarship from Christchurch's Willows Cricket Club).
On his return to Dunedin, he continued to work on his music, before he headed to Perth, then Sydney.
He and a friend attempted to perform as a duo in Sydney, but "it didn't work out''.
The financial demands of a big city didn't help either, so he returned home and soon found work on a farm in Southland where he saved enough money to buy some music equipment.
He returned to Dunedin, stowed his cricket bat and focused on his songs.
To answer the obvious question "why couldn't he do both?'', McMeeken says the sport just took up too much time.
A two-day game?
"That's the entire weekend gone.''
Still, at 23, he's hardly gone to the pack.
As early evening light filters through the hotel's lounge, McMeeken practically glows good health.
Good hair, teeth and bone structure help, too.
And given he's in the relatively early stages of forging a career in pop, those attributes won't hurt.
Not that he gives any impression he plans to utilise these.
On initial impressions, he seems to have ditched some of the more annoying traits that can accompany youngish, roguish singer-songwriters: vanity and earnestness.
In their place is a sleeves-rolled-up attitude that might just serve him well.
McMeeken no longer lives in the house next to the hotel.
He moved to Auckland at the start of last year, formed a band, recorded an EP, and pays the bills by playing covers a couple of nights a week.
A pragmatist, he's worked out a way to draw a line between other people's songs and his own.
Back home for one night last week as part of a NZ On Air tour of South Island radio stations, promoting his new single City and its accompanying video, McMeeken says he was convinced to move to the big smoke by music producer Greg Haver, who had worked on his EP, Screaming Man, released in October last year.
McMeeken funded Screaming Man through a combination of his own money, a PledgeMe campaign and a grant from NZ On Air (in contrast to 2014 debut EP The Valley, which was entirely self-funded).
Recorded at Neil Finn's Roundhead Studios, the follow-up to The Valley added darker textures to the skeletons of tunes that clearly began on acoustic guitar.
Although McMeeken's guitar phrasing and assured vocals remained the prime focus, Haver clearly had some fun playing with layers of electronic textures.
The result: a cohesive collection of delicate pop songs tweaked and twisted beyond the obvious, yet still potentially friendly enough for commercial radio.
The EP reached No19 on the New Zealand album chart; as of last week, the single City had accumulated nearly 220,000 plays on Spotify; and the NZ singles airplay charts had it at No51 last week.
According to an industry source, his songwriting has attracted plenty of interest.
"I foresee great things in his future. He is very level headed and well equipped to take it all in his stride,'' they said.
McMeeken does seem to be well grounded: "I'm wary of this business. The model has changed so much. Back in the day, it used to be a case of getting a record deal but it's not so much like that any more.
"Take [United States hip-hop duo] Ryan Lewis and Macklemore, who have shown you can do it completely on your own.
"I have a small team of people helping me but, ultimately, it is down to me trusting my own judgement.
"I do have a goal for this year but the nature of music leads you on its own path. That said, I'm working on writing my debut album. I'd like to have it written and perhaps start recording towards the end of this year.
"I'm sitting on four or five songs that are ready, but I really want 20 or more to choose from. Sure, a debut album is not the be all and end all, but it's a pretty big deal.''
As you read this, McMeeken might have come up with a few more potential tracks, having yesterday completed a five-day songwriting workshop at Neil Finn's Roundhead Studios.
Accepted into the APRA-NZ On Air initiative "Song Hubs'' (with Mel Parsons, Anna Coddington and others), McMeeken rubbed shoulders with visiting songwriters MoZella (Madonna, Miley Cirus, One Direction, Rihanna), Sacha Skarbeck (Adele, James Blunt, Lana Del Rey, Backstreet Boys) and Lindy Robbins (Jason Derulo, Selena Gomez, 5 Seconds of Summer, Westlife).
Speaking a few days before the workshop, McMeeken was both excited and slightly wary of the prospect: "In regards these songwriting sessions, it's important to stay true to myself, to not think of the concept of an outcome when writing.
"Working with Greg Haver helped me be open to other possibilities. Sometimes you don't have to have a complete song; you can put an idea to someone and establish a connection.
"A year ago I couldn't have conceived being involved in such a collaborative thing.''
