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Down to earth Runga contemplates beautiful collision

Original article is at: Stuff.co.nz

Date: 28 November, 2002

By: Mike Houlahan

Bic Runga is winging her way around the world promoting her new album, but Mike Houlahan finds the Auckland singer/songwriter in a down-to-earth mood.

Melodic, sumptuous and reflective are a few descriptions that have been offered for Bic Runga's new album, Beautiful Collision.

The woman herself has an entirely unexpected word to describe her sophomore effort.

"Wordy. I'd call it a wordy album," she laughs. "It's quite verbose in places."

Maybe it shouldn't surprise that Beautiful Collision is lyric-heavy. Released five years after Runga's debut, Drive, the Auckland based singer-songwriter no doubt had a whole lot of things she wanted to say, and they had been stored away for a good long time. Too long, some might say.

"I don't think it was ready until it was ready. How long is a piece of string?," Runga asks.

"It's so arbitrary to say a record should take six months to make or six weeks to make - or in my case three years - but it just wasn't ready until it was ready.

"The stresses of following up Drive were enormous, and I just didn't want to release the record until it was ready. I could have released it quite quickly, just to ride that wave and sell it just off the back of Drive. That five year period between the two is far too long in marketing terms, but who cares?"

With more than 30,000 copies of Beautiful Collision sold so far, it seems the New Zealand record buying public hasn't forgotten Runga.

Perhaps more importantly for her future international career, audiences worldwide haven't forgotten her either. There was an expectation in the wake of the success of Drive that Runga would go on and conquer the world - a perhaps unreasonable expectation which saw more pressure heaped on the young woman's shoulders than she could easily bear.

Despite the long wait for a follow-up record, international labels have been supportive. Beautiful Collision is out in Australia - where Runga has just toured - and is about to be released in Europe.

Runga has also just come back from a 15 date headlining tour in North America, playing to crowds of 300 plus a night - something she hopes will impress her US label.

"I'm definitely finding in America that when people come to the shows, they come back to the next show and they bring their friends," Runga says.

"We're selling enormous amounts of records at the shows, which is good."

All of which makes Runga sound driven by a desire to succeed: in reality however, she is remarkably laid-back about the whole thing.

Her new attitude to the business side of showbiz comes from the support she has received from peers such as Neil and Tim Finn and Dave Dobbyn – all of whom have sought worldwide fame and fortune with varying degrees of success.

"The whole international aspect of the music industry is a complete distraction, because it's all hearsay as to whether or not an artist like me could have a career internationally. It's an unnecessary distraction," Runga says.

"If I can focus on the fact I'm a New Zealand musician and those guys (the Finns and Dobbyn) are my company, it puts my place in the world in perspective.

"It helps ground you, to know you have company as a musician and not out on your own blowing in the wind trying to break America or make a record that might get played on American radio and all those kind of concerns, that are totally irrelevant."

Runga freely admits that such concerns were weighing heavily on her mind when trying to complete Beautiful Collision: "I went quite far down the track of making a record that was trying too hard to be too cool," she says.

It has been well documented how she started, then scrapped, the record on more than one occasion. It was fortunate, she says, that at a point when she was wondering if Beautiful Collision would ever be finished, that Tim Finn and Dave Dobbyn provided her with an unexpected and ultimately satisfying distraction, dragging her out on tour with them.

The Finn/Dobbyn/Runga tour packed theatres around the country, spawned a successful live album and - most importantly for Runga - restored her confidence.

"I really enjoyed it," she says.

"I was lost in the deepest, darkest part of my own record and I'd kind of disappeared up my own arse. They pulled me out of my own self-absorption in kind of the most brutal way you can, by dragging someone on stage. It had to be done though.

" If I hadn't done that tour I probably would have completely wiped out, just in terms of going too far down the dark valley.

"The level of empathy with guys like Tim and Dave and Neil, they've all been there and done that and it's all old hat to them. 'So, you're a bit depressed about your second record? Come up and play on stage.' It was all good.

"The recording experience was just a bit too solitary for me and it was good to have the camaraderie from guys who had been there and done that."

Re-energised, Runga returned to the studio and finally finished Beautiful Collision. It is a very different record from Drive - more polished, less raw, but just as intricately crafted in terms of its songwriting.

It is so different from Drive because Runga consciously wanted to make a record which was nothing like the preceding release. To Runga's ears Drive is poorly produced, and doesn't match the high standards she sets for her music.

"It is what it is, and I try not to dislike it, but I feel like I did half a job, although maybe it was a half decent job," she says.

"It might be that the second record is a little more cerebral; it's not as raw and emotive as the first one. I guess a lot of it was done with the brain and not the body. I was really trying to do some good craft so far as the production went.

"Some days I think I missed the point perhaps and maybe we should have left the mistakes in, should have the raw moments in. I think I know that for the future now, and I think the third album will be the one I won't find anything to whinge about. That remains to be seen."

Happily for Runga's fans, it seems it won't be another five years wait for the next album. Plans are already afoot for the writing of her next record to start within months, she says.

"I've rented this amazing house in Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. It has a grand piano and I'm going to go there in January and February and write songs," Runga says.

"The house actually belongs to Alfred Hitchcock's personal assistant and it's got so much mood - it's a real boho, quite dark house in Laurel Canyon, where all the famous hippy records were made.

"I want to knock out the third record in the space of a few weeks, like I did with Drive, because I'm ready for that now. I've done the big epic project, and I don't want to do that again."

Bic Runga tours New Zealand during December.