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NineMSN
July, 2002

Review of Beautiful Collision

Original article is at: www.ninemsn.com.au

July 2002

By NineMSN

Bic Runga certainly knows how to make the most of a beautiful voice. Her follow up album Beautiful Collision is vocally stunning. Maybe it's something to do with her Maori heritage, which seems to lend itself to producing some fine vocal chords, however Bic's voice is smoother than silk. Even when she's jumping an octave midway through pronouncing a word that would make the rest of us sound like a Bavarian with bronchitis and a bad hangover, her voice doesn't even flutter. She tries to pretend her voice isn't perfect on a few tracks, you can hear her draw breath on 'The Be All And End All', but no one is really going to buy into that.

Stylistically her album sits somewhere between the mainstream, Bjork and a jazzy night at the Basement. She is quite bluesy folksy on tracks like 'Get Some Sleep' and then she goes avant-garde for the symphonic pop of tracks like 'Beautiful Collision'. The atmosphere that the music creates can be haunting and then completely soothing like a cup of tea, a warm footbath and a woolen jumper .The shift and everything that lies in between don't seem out place because there is of course a Bic's voice binding it all together.

There was some worry that this album might not come off after three years in eight different studios, half of New Zealand's musician population and few more having their two bob's worth however any doubt about the quality of Bic Runga's talent should be laid to rest. More than just her voice, the whole package is quality and if it takes three years to attain that then so be it..