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Sunday Star Times
Wings of Desire
Review of Birds
Original content sourced from Sunday Star Times
Source: Sunday Star Times
By: Grant Smithies
Rating: лллл
Website: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/sundaystartimes/0,2106,3483378a11155,00.html
Wings of desire
20 November 2005
If you leave aside the pre-digested schmaltz of Hayley Westenra, and you really
should, then Bic Runga is New Zealand's biggest-selling female artist. Her
albums, Drive (1996) and Beautiful Collision (2002), have sold 105,000 and
165,000 copies here respectively, as well as a good few thousand overseas, and
"Get Some Sleep" made the top 10 in Ireland and Japan as well as grazing the UK
top 40. Which means there's an awful lot riding on studio album number three,
for Runga and her record company.
To keep Runga's more discerning fans happy, the new album needs to feel like a
progression from the youthful bedroom ruminations of Drive and the articulate
orchestral pop of Beautiful Collision. And to sell well and consolidate her
burgeoning overseas success, it needs to contain a couple of plausible radio
hits.
Fortunately, it succeeds on both counts. Birds is a darker, deeper, slightly
more depressing record than either of its predecessors, with a trio of fine
radio-friendly songs ("Winning Arrow", "Listen", "That's Alright") to help get
its hooks into people's hearts.
Self-produced and recorded in Auckland's stately Monte Cecilia House, it sounds
spacious and agreeably spooky. You can sense the sound bouncing around those big
old rooms, reverberating off the ornate plaster ceilings, the parquet floors and
marble fireplaces, and occasionally you can feel the presence of ghosts -absent
lovers, present but emotionally distant lovers, passing spirits, the damaged,
the dead.
This slightly haunted feel is reinforced by the inner jacket art - a series of
striking black and white photographs of native birds by artist Fiona Pardington,
each bird dead and stuffed, its spirit elsewhere.
The first track, "Winning Arrow" is a great radio song full of Carpenters' chord
progressions and cautious optimism, but after that, it's all sad. I'd say this
is a three-hanky album at least, possibly four or five. Early highlight "Say
After Me" is full of fire imagery, but really, this tender torch song is sodden
with tears. More than anything else on this album, this song sounds like Paris,
Runga's home for the past few years. It has that city's sadness and grandeur,
and extravagant romanticism. The melody meanders like a jilted lover though
ancient streets, the strings flow like the Seine, glittering on the surface and
murky beneath.
Occasionally you feel the presence
of ghosts - absent lovers, present
but emotionally distant lovers, passing spirits,
the damaged, the dead.
"Listen" is also a pearler, with a
laid-back 70s country-soul feel, the country coming via the splendid guitar and
Neil Young-ish harmonica of "Boxcar Benny" Maitland and some perfectly judged
piano from Neil Finn, and the soul from the understated swing of ex-Trinity
Roots drummer Riki Gooch.
Elsewhere many of the songs are swollen with 60s musical references. Choppy
guitar up-strokes accent the beats, with pronounced background vocals, lush
strings and melancholy French horns, the combination variously recalling Phil
Spector's tragic girl-group epics, Motown album ballads and the orchestral
French pop of Jacques Brel, Claudine Longet and Charles Aznavour.
"If I Had You", "Captured" and "It's Over" in particular sound like
transmissions from a time when popular music was more tense and theatrical, and
instrumental backings more sonically lavish. All three songs feature backing
singers Shayne Carter, Anna Coddington and Anika Moa prominently in the mix;
Moa's breathy, sighing voice swoops down and steals "It's Over".
Another highlight is "Ruby Nights", a nicely creepy death ballad full of
thudding percussion, spectral guitar, deft echo chamber trickery and Runga
intoning eerie lyrics about "cloudy demons circling in the sky" in the lowest
voice I've heard her use. A moody little marvel.
As befits the title track, "Birds" is the album's centrepiece. Melodically
beautiful and atmospheric, it delights and frustrates in equal measure. In the
first section, Runga's somewhat apprehensive voice drifts in over some subtle
bazouki-style guitar from Pluto's Tim Arnold and scattered clusters of minor
chords from Finn that recall Bill Evans' impressionistic piano work on Miles
Davis' Kind of Blue. The gentle spookiness of it all is truly lovely, providing
one of the album's highpoints, but it doesn't last long. Strings arrive in the
mid-section, Runga starts wailing wordlessly in evocation of her pain, and it
builds into a dramatic tango as a well-worn caged bird metaphor unfolds: "I only
want you to be mine; I only want you to be free".
The intro is superb, the orchestration spectacular and the concept driving the
song strong, but the vocal treatment is unconvincing. These are intensely
emotional lyrics but Runga doesn't let her voice go to the dark and painful
places the words suggest. This has been the main criticism from those who do not
"get" the public enthusiasm for Runga's records - that her music is pretty but
inconsequential, and her voice too delicate and tentative for the high drama of
her songs.
This would seem to be supported by some of the less substantial tracks here
("That's Alright" , "Blue Blue Heart"), and by the fact that Runga's most
effective earlier songs are more whimsical fare ("Get Some Sleep", "Something
Good", "Listening for the Weather") or sparse and graceful ballads ("Sway",
"Drive", "The Be All and End All", "When I See You Smile") in which the
lightness of her voice isn't competing against dramatic orchestration.
This new album may be the one to refute such criticism. On "If I Had You", "Say
After Me" or "Captured", Runga's vocal power is unarguable. These are songs
where she digs deep as a singer, songs that burn with a hot blue flame. Yes, the
best of Birds is very, very good. So good that you're prepared to overlook the
occasional earthbound song.
Bic Runga
Birds (Sony / BMG)
Darker, deeper
Birds is released on November 28 through Sony/BMG.
Sunday Star Times review й 2005 Fairfax New Zealand Limited. All rights reserved.
