Reviews

Bic Runga, Lisa Loeb offer 
thoughtful pop

Original content copyright 2002 to Star News

Original article is at:    Star News

Posted:   Thursday, January 16, 2003

By:        John Everson

Opening with the exquisitely delicate acoustic guitar and lilting vocal confession of "When I See You Smile," Bic Runga's second album ranges from whispery reflection to upbeat pop jangle.

"Get Some Sleep," its second track, is an example of the kind of perfect harmonic songcraft that Simon & Garfunkel once made vogue. It's a mesmerizing, hand-clappin' sing-along, littered with perfectly executed rhymes about getting through the day: "Stranded in June/whistling the same old tune/but I do believe I might be having fun/ impeccably dressed in your secondhand vest/we were waiting for the taxi to come."

Runga hails from New Zealand, and picks up the mantle relinguished by fellow down-under artists Frente in her lilting folk-pop approach. She also pulls in another New Zealand star, Crowded House's Neil Finn, to sing backup on a couple of tracks.

Runga is not a newcomer to the pop world; she first released an EP back in 1995, and then expanded those songs to an LP release in 1997.

It took a couple of years for that album, Drive, to get released all around the world, but it ultimately brought her critical acclaim and a number of awards for its refreshing, unpretentious sound. For the past three years, Runga has worked on its followup, and Beautiful Collision, released last summer in Australia, and at the end of the year around the rest of the world, was worth the wait.

Runga sings in a high, lilting range, but without the overdrama that often comes with such a delivery. She comes across as girlish and vulnerable, and her songs, while often quiet, never fade to ignorable background music. Lyrically, she spins inventive, evocative phrasing, like the introduction to the swaying "The Be All and End All": "Flogging the rocking horse/getting nowhere/we are a pair to behold/you like a funeral, me like a fair/nobody cares for the show."

Beautiful Collision offers a classically influenced, piano-driven jazz mood in the end-of-relationship ode "Honest Goodbyes," and steps up the cymbals and strings for an equally jazzy ballad in the title track.

"Listening for the Weather" opens with a harmonica as it launches into a sprightly moving country pop melody that yields one of her sharpest lyrical asides: "All the people that I know in the apartments down below/Busy with their starring roles in their own tragedies."

Runga melds piano and mildly rockin' guitars in "Election Night" and ends the disc with one of its most atmospheric exercises in "Gravity."

Beautiful Collision is a marvelous distillation of heart and humor, featuring the quietly powerful songwriter solidly in control at the microphone. This CD grows more evocative with every listen.

Original content copyright 2003 to Star News