Anna Coddington's Little Island tour

Vicki Anderson talks to Anna Coddington about her Little Islands tour, making a music video in Christchurch and her new fun group, Alluzzionzz, alongside Anika Moa and Julia Deans.

After one holiday driving around in picturesque scenery, sticking to the car's vinyl seats on humid days, I stopped for a break from the never-ending straight roads and was reminded of what's really important in life: namely a kick-ass record store.

More than just hubs of commerce, a good indie record store is a gathering point, a place of discovery, a magnet for those seeking something more than the too easily digested pabulum of all that is mainstream.

In one such place, last year, behind the counter I found a lanky pony-tailed man with unfashionably long sideburns and a whiff of patchouli, playing music to the store's resident cat.

I sidled over to check out the section marked with a red felt pen labelled "Kiwi s...". Ponytail appeared beside me with half a dozen vinyl records tucked under one arm and a meaty paw full of CDs in his hands.

"Most Kiwi music is s..., eh," he said. "But this chick's music is hot, you should give it a spin."

I took with me a copy of Kiwi songstress Anna Coddington's album Cat and Bird, her second solo album released last year.

At first listen, Coddington does not reveal herself easily. Mood is feistily placed in the foreground over narrative; glances over confessions.

Her work is primarily sensual, making the gut coil long before the listener has consciously analysed what they've heard.

She easily switches from wholesome and sweet to dark and mysterious. Cat and Bird is an album of fantastic lyrical imagery – Coddington holds a master's degree in linguistics – and a mix of indie pop and mid-tempo rock.

"My album is imagining the relationship between a cat and a bird, if they were romantically entwined," Coddington says.

Coddington brings the live version of it to her Little Islands tour, touring with her partner, Ned Ngatae, on guitar, Mike Hall (Nightchoir/Pluto) on bass, and multi-instrumentalist Riki Gooch (Eru Dangerspiel, Trinity Roots) on drums.

Tonight the 30-year-old plays the first gig of her eight-date nationwide tour in Raglan at the Yot Club, the venue run by her dad, Peter.

Raglan is where it all began for Coddington who first learnt to play her dad's drums when she was 11, later opting to sling a guitar around her neck.

At Hamilton Girls' High School in the late 1990s she and her friends Aidee Walker and Janna Hawkins beat over 400 other bands to win the Xtrasmokefreerockquest with their teenage ghetto-pop outfit Handsome Geoffrey.

In 2004, the trio, joined by Jonny Corker, "a boy from Bethells Beach", became Duchess, making their live debut at the Illicit Streetwear Christmas party the same year.

They played alongside Goldenhorse, Goodshirt, Voom and Pluto, among others, and Coddington spent her summer writing songs embracing themes of heartbreak, Hamilton night clubs, bad gardening experiences and swimming.

Duchess released one self-titled EP, produced by Bressa Creeting Cake's Edmund Cake.

They eventually went their own ways, and now Coddington finds herself back in a new trio – this time with Anika Moa and Julia Deans.

They are calling themselves Alluzzionzz, named after a band Moa's mother was in, and in it Coddington goes back to her Raglan roots – she's on drums.

"With Alluzzionzz we've been rehearsing once a week, we had one yesterday," Coddington explains.

"Now we're talking about the possibility of recording. Primarily it's for fun, we're three women who've been making music for over 10 years so it's nice to have a project that's just self indulgent. We did our first gig at my birthday party last year. We had three songs then, we have six now. We take it in turns singing. We each brought two songs to the table and we sing our own songs.

"It's exciting because there's so much scope there and no pressure. We can take it in any direction we want. The sound is quite different to our solo projects, it's less poppy, more fuzzy and sometimes a lot faster.

"It'll be interesting to see what happens later on down the track. Neeks is busy with the babies and it's hard for us to find time to have a decent jam together."

The video for single Little Islands, off Cat and Bird, was shot in Lyttelton and directed by Logan McMillan.

"I'm really happy with it. Usually when you're making a video it always feels like there's not enough money to do everything you want but Logan worked the budget so we were able to fly the whole band down for the shoot. We played a gig in Wanaka and did the video on the way back up. We shot the indoor scenes with the band in Lyttelton and they went home and the rest is just me in Hagley Park."

Coddington wrote the song at a stage in her life when she was feeling slightly frustrated and bored with her life. Its lyrics include the lines: "From these little islands all I see are stars / It's complicated / It's really hard to explain / I love the blue and the green / but somewhere in between / My f...ing hair's turning grey."

"It's about how living in a little country can be isolating but it's pretty f...ing beautiful as well. It's the age-old argument, isolation is a blessing and a curse."

Alongside Alluzzionzz, Coddington has been touring with Fly My Pretties, working on ideas for her next solo album and also on a project closer to home.

"Ned, my guitarist and partner, has been producing his own beats and I've started singing on those, I'm really enjoying that.

"I'm also writing songs for my next album. I'm taking it slow, it's important to me that it's good. I'm not sure yet which musical direction my next album will take. I've been getting heaps of ideas. In the past songs came to me fully formed, now I'm starting with one guitar riff and pushing it through into a song. I've been listening to a few records that are more groove based than vocal based. I'm experimenting a bit more this time around."

Following this tour, she has a couple of gigs booked and then the rest of her year sprawls ahead like a straight road in the Canterbury Plains. "I'm going to stay with my sister in the UK this year, to hang out with her and her baby. But, for me, this year is largely about getting out of my comfort zone in every possible way."

Like a bird flying free, perhaps.

Check out the dates of Anna Coddington's Little Island tour here.

- © Fairfax NZ News