Interviews - BIRD's

Stuff.co.nz
25 November, 2005

Bic Runga's new album set to soar

Original content copyright 2005 to Fairfax New Zealand Ltd

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Bic Runga's new album set to soar

New Zealand songbird Bic Runga crafted her new album backed up by an ensemble of talented New Zealand musicians. She talks to Hannah Lawrence about coming home and being guided by greater forces.

This year has been one of both loss and creation for Bic Runga.

After almost two years living in Paris, Runga returned to New Zealand last summer, but her homecoming ended on a sad note with the death of her father Joe early this year.

Soon after she embarked on a world tour with Neil and Tim Finn, and it was during that tour that Runga's third album Birds - to be released on November 28 - got its wings.

"It was just after my Dad died," Runga says.

"There were long bus rides, listening to music with Neil and talking about how to make a good record," she says.

Finn, who contributed vocals to Runga's second album Beautiful Collision, agreed to be part of an ensemble of players that would join Runga on Birds.

"He was the first to be recruited, and when you get him everything else seems to fall into place."

The ensemble also features vocalists Anika Moa, Anna Coddington and Dimmer frontman Shayne Carter, Trinity Root's Riki Gooch on drums, Conrad Standish of Melbourne band The Devastations on bass, and "Boxcar Benny" Maitland and Pluto's Tim Arnold on guitars.

Some, like Moa and Carter are good friends of Runga's, while others, like Gooch, she had not met before recording Birds.

But the group gelled from the beginning, she says.

"It did, it really did. It seemed like such an unlikely group of people, but it did. It was right."

The group spent a month in August recording in Auckland's Monte Cecilia House, built in 1879, with much of the album recorded in live takes.

Being supported by other talented New Zealanders was significant to this album.

"This is kind of the grounding album - it's the year my Dad died and we had a pretty deep experience with his tangi," she says.

"Six months after he died I took Anika and Anna and Shayne down to where he was from and, I don't know, it just felt really right.

"It feels like a very New Zealand album, it feels like a soulful album," Runga says.

"It's not a commercial album - I'm not trying to break America or anything - it's just my down home album."

Joe Runga's death impacted the album's creation.

"I always felt that there were things greater than myself at play," Runga says.

"It was that kind of feeling that I was guided by, just something stronger than myself."

And this made the process easier, she says.

"I didn't really sweat the small stuff, I just got on a flow and all these people were really blessing the whole project, so that was good."

The songs for Birds were written much more quickly than for previous albums Drive (released 1996) and Beautiful Collision (2002).

"It was easier. A song is not a big thing, you know, it's just a little thing. It's not like writing a book, it's quite easy, it's quite simple and it should be simple."

Drive and Beautiful Collision sold seven and eleven times platinum respectively in New Zealand and in some ways their success took the pressure off Runga.

"I guess I'm just settling into the long haul, the body of work," she says. "There's years of work to go and I realised that no one album has to be more important than the others, it's just doing good work all the way."

Runga says the singing style on Birds differs from her earlier albums. This was influenced in part by the 1960s French pop she had been listening to and the women who sang on those albums.

"They don't really over-exert themselves, they're not really singers, they're just sort of pretty girls pouting into microphones, and I think that's cool," she laughs.

"I don't need to prove myself as a singer or a musician, I just wanted to convey an emotion. So the singing is quite small in a way."

The newly assembled band also added a different dimension.

"They have a level of skill that is pretty high, so when they're in that zone it's quite a forceful thing. As much as the record is really sparse it had a real intensity, just from their concentration."

As with her earlier albums Runga produced Birds herself.

"When someone is producing your record, especially if they don't know you that well, they make assumptions about what you're trying to be, and I'm not trying to be anything, I'm just doing what's normal to me," she says.

"I think all the people on this record are producers in their own right as well.

"We were never at a loss for what to do, everyone knew what was going on."

She sought the input of her backing cast and ideas were shared.

"This was a different process, this was really democratic and I had total trust in everyone."

The result is a rich but subtle blend of beautiful melodies and haunting lyrics. Birds has been described as darker than Runga's previous work, with an inherent sadness, but this was not done by design.

"I never intended it to be depressing," Runga says. "Maybe delightfully depressing?" she laughs.

"There's something nice and comforting about not being happy, about being subdued, but always there's a glimmer of hope, I'm not without hope I don't think."

Runga performs two Auckland concerts in coming days, and will tour in March.

"That'll be cool, I'm really looking forward to it," she says.

"There's some outdoor concerts which I miss doing, I think that's another big thing about being back home - there's that kind of outdoor, barbeque type concert.

"It's great. There's nothing better than playing outside when the sun is going down, it's magic."

Meanwhile, she is enjoying being home.

"It's good, it's nice, it's warm. I go for really long walks in the bush and I go to the beach and it's all those things that are good about being here."

Runga is constantly working on new material - "I'm writing a lot of the time, you don't need tools, you can just do it walking or sitting around" - and what comes next could be a virtual U-turn.

"I really want to make a rock 'n' roll album one day, cause I'm a bit over all this shmaltzy ballad stuff," laughs Runga, who also plays the drums.

"It'd be fun."

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