Singer is heaven sent

BY GRANT SMITHIES

BROOKE FRASER has been using Google to find out if I am friend or foe. She's just finished reading the last story I wrote about her, when her second album came out in 2006.

"I can never remember which writers have been mean to me," she says from the Sony offices in Auckland. "But your story was very fair and open and friendly. I appreciated it."

And I appreciate Fraser. In a music scene with no shortage of poseurs, plonkers and bandwagon jumpers, she knows who she is and says what she thinks.

The daughter of former All Black Bernie Fraser, she is calm, clever and articulate, a straight-talking born-again Christian from Lower Hutt with an airy soprano and a rare gift for radio-friendly melodies and evocative lyrical metaphors.

Back in those bygone days when most people still paid for CDs, she was a big seller, too: her 2003 debut album What To Do With Daylight shifted more than 105,000 copies here, and 2006's Albertine follow-up managed a very respectable 60,000.

Some grumps criticise her songs for being a tad wide-eyed and sentimental, but her music nonetheless effortlessly outclasses 90% of what gets played on commercial pop radio, compelling all but the most resolute cynic to whistle, hum or sing along badly. These songs are musical wallpaper of the prettiest kind, and the best of them rise above being merely decorative to feel honest, insightful and true.

Of all the female pop singers to have emerged in this country since Bic Runga, Fraser and the heavily hyped Gin Wigmore seem the most likely to gain some traction in the huge, holy grail market of America.

Now 26, Fraser married Australian musician Scott Ligertwood in 2008 and lives in Sydney when she's not touring. Her third album, Flags, is due for release in October and seems destined to follow the previous two into the upper reaches of our charts.

It was, she says, an album born out of difficult times. "When I started writing it, I was in the middle of what felt like endless years of touring.

"I felt frustrated and stuck and burnt out, really. I didn't know what to do, but I knew I wanted to record in California, so I thought I'd go over early to see what happened."

Good move. Fraser relocated to Los Angeles in February and the change of scene revitalized her writing. New songs started popping up like mushrooms. "I arrived with only four songs and within three months had written the whole thing and was heading into the studio. I still feel on a high from it, really.

"I arrived in LA really dejected, feeling like I'd written my last song, and then left the place with a finished album. I'm a very happy girl."

The new album is considerably lighter in tone than Albertine, and no wonder: the latter was partially inspired by a visit to Rwanda with World Vision in 2005, 11 years after genocide killed nearly a million people there. "I'm really proud of Albertine, but those songs are very intense, and having to revisit all that raw emotion each night on stage for years on end really took its toll.

"Flags has a lot more bouyant, fun songs, which will balance out the older, sadder stuff and make touring a lot more survivable.

"I think I've made a tasty little smorgasbord of songs this time. There's still some melancholy stuff, but I'm a pop singer with a job to do as well as art to make, so there needs to be a few good radio singles, too.

"With most local female artists like Bic, Anika, Hollie, Gin or myself, you form an impression based on the singles, but once you investigate the albums you find a lot more emotional range. What I'm trying to say is, if people are a bit freaked out by my new single, then don't worry; I haven't made a hillbilly record."

The single she's referring to is "Something in the Water", an unexpectedly perky country-pop ditty built around a rollicking bluegrass stomp. Fans of Fraser's previous introspective ballad style might choke on their muesli when they first hear her like this, all done up in dungarees and checked gingham, rattling along some Appalachian backroad smelling faintly of moonshine.

Sped up and stripped of its usual sadness, Fraser's voice has a weightless Dolly Parton lilt, as if it's about to lift off and fly direct to Nashville, and she has developed a noticeable American twang. She sings "wah-der" for water and "soli-too" for solitude.

Is Fraser suddenly ashamed of her accent? "Not at all. I love our accent. I just think singing should be accent-less, I guess, so as not to distract from the song. I read an article recently where some professor blasted New Zealanders for singing in American accents, and I knew what he meant, but our accent has a distinctive sort of flatness to it, so if you apply that to a melody that people overseas are gonna hear, it might not be the wisest artistic move."

Very diplomatically put, which is typical, really.

Fraser is thoughtful and sweet in a very old-fashioned way. She's a stranger to crudeness, malice and profanity, to the extent that I feel like an irredeemably vulgar swear-oholic pessimist next to her. Fraser says things like "gosh". When she's really excited, it becomes "Oh, my gosh!" She doesn't bitch about anyone or anything, devotes time and money to charities such as World Vision and sponsors 10 African children. The sun reflects so brightly off her halo that I'm forced to conclude Fraser is the closest thing the local pop scene has to an angel, though the press release for her new album prefers to call her a "jetset bohemian". She laughs when I mention it. "I don't even know what a jetset bohemian is!"

LAST TIME I talked to Fraser, she told me she made music because she believed it could change the world. Music had spiritual power, she said: "Many people who buy my albums will never walk into a church, but I'm hopeful that if they have my album in their car or in their iPod, God might walk into their room instead."

Most of the yearningly romantic songs on past albums were addressed to God, rather than a lover. They were hymns to Him, unbeknownst to most of the heathen sinners at home singing along.

At that time, her music was almost a form of ministry, but Flags feels more worldly. There's less spiritual angst in it, though Fraser herself is no less devout. "It was interesting writing songs after such a long hiatus. I thought – what is Brooke Fraser music like now? What do I want to say?

"I really wanted to stretch myself, writing about new things from different perspectives. This album is a lot more observational, rather than just directly singing what I feel. It's still me talking about life, but using the voices of various characters to tell different kinds of stories."

Not all of these stories are lightweight pop radio fodder, either. A farming family is beset by pestilence on "Crows and Locusts". "Ice on Her Lashes" is about death and grief. An embarrassing birthmark shaped like Canada is not the only thing being hidden by the central character of "Betty", and title track "Flags" ponders cultural identity and injustice.

Fraser produced the record herself, involving a lot of American friends in the recording. "During the years when I felt a bit burnt out, the thing that made me fall in love with music again was jamming with friends, or playing at festivals where it felt like a community thing. I really wanted to bring that sense of community into the recording process, so there's a duet on there, and I co-wrote some songs, and my friends sing harmonies. Like on "Here's to You", which is a sort of pub shanty inspired by a conversation about Heath Ledger. A friend was saying what a tragedy it was we'd lost him, but to me he's still alive in the art he left behind. That song's about the idea of music as your living legacy, with a big gang of my friends singing."

Some of those friends will be playing here in October, when Fraser imports her LA band for her tour. "It was cheaper to fly them over here than fly you all over there," she laughs. "And I love playing at home. I'm really aware that I would never have had the opportunity to play in Australia or America or London without Kiwis having supported me from the start.

"Homecoming is always really special to me, and it will be great to start the tour here before I spend the next few years living out of a suitcase."

Fraser's last tour was gruelling, lasting for more than three years and leaving her deeply disillusioned and struggling to write a song. You have to wonder why she's stepping on this treadmill again. After all, the usual motivators don't apply. She's not an egotist seeking validation from roaring crowds. She not interested in fame for its own sake. Personal wealth isn't important. So why does she do it? Because she has a sense of vocation, and believes her music is a force for good in the world.

"Earlier this year I met this girl in a random part of America. She'd been through a really hard time and tried to kill herself, and during her recovery, she listened to Albertine every day. She said to me, 'thank you for loving me through your music that had a huge effect on me!

"There's an element of doing what I do for selfish artistic reasons, sure, but I also love the idea of someone putting on a CD and feeling like the singer is reaching out through the speakers to give them a hug. Really, we listen to music because it makes us feel something. Sometimes we want to feel sad or stirred into action, and other times we want to feel comforted or made happier. That's important, and that's something I want to do. I want people to put on my music and feel better about themselves and the world."

Brooke Fraser's third album, Flags, is released on October 11 via Sony Music.

Tour dates: October 26, Dunedin Town Hall; October 27, James Hay Theatre, Christchurch; October 29, Opera House, Wellington; October 30, Civic Theatre, Auckland; October 31, Clarence Street Theatre, Hamilton.

FREE DOWNLOAD The Sunday Star-Times is offering readers an exclusive free download of Brooke Fraser's new single "Something in the Water", from her forthcoming album Flags. For complete details of how to download the single, see page C9 of this week's edition. And, for details on how to win double Gold passes to Brooke's concert in Auckland at The Civic on Saturday, October 30, see page C5 of this week's edition.

- © Fairfax NZ News