Now you see her, now you don't. The kiwi singer- songwriter stopped in Ireland long enough to tell Tony Clayton-Lea about doing something different
NEW Zealand's Bic Runga is as intriguing and compact as her name. A tiny frame poured into a little black dress, tired and weary after a flight from New York, Bic has landed in Dublin to conduct some interviews for her third album, Birds.
Runga is one of a number of international favourites beloved by (at very least) radio programmers in this country. Her previous album, Beautiful Collision (2002), was pillaged for tracks that mixed accessible melody with acute intelligence; here was an artist, you felt, who would cross over into the mainstream without undue fuss. All she needed was a follow-up chockfull of similar-but-different pop songs and she'd be off on a trail of hit singles, Grammy Awards and marriage to a Hollywood movie star. (Bic Penn has a certain ring to it, don't you think?)
It might have worked out that way if Runga had been the kind of musician and songwriter who cared about such things. Around the time of Beautiful Collision, she seemed to want it all, right there and right then. But within a year her father died and whatever starstruck ambitions she may have had died with him. She talks quietly of how she knew she had to start living her life properly, of realizing how important it was to "live a good life".
"When I was making the first album," she says, "I was just out of my teens, and it was all a big bluff, because I never really knew what I was doing, but I pretended to. I produced all my own tracks quite blindly. Birds was made with a bit more certainty, and a lot less fear. With my father passing away, almost overnight I gave up the fear. I mean, what's it good for? Not much."
Birds, then, was formulated quite differently from Beautiful Collision and 1996's Drive, which were made, she reveals, with the unspoken but nevertheless weighty pressure of trying to appease radio, or of trying to second guess what people might want to buy.
"After having two records that never did anything in an international sense, I'm now quite free from that pressure. Trying to second guess what people want is a fool's game; you can fall flat on your face. All the best records you hear are the ones that are made boldly, by necessity, by wanting to do what you need to do."
Drive, she reckons from a distance of 10 years, "is depressing, totally depressing. I don't mind that - at least it's planting its foot firmly somewhere." Beautiful Collision was a bit jauntier, she thinks, although it suffered from an "identity problem". The new album (which was released in New Zealand late last year and certified double platinum within a week) is, The Ticket offers, equally divided between sombre and sultry.
"I like sultry and sombre," responds Runga. "They're not bad feelings or atmospheres to shoot for at all. You could try to be happy, but some overtly happy music is kinda irritating. It's trying to find the balance."
An important part of trying to find the balance, she says, is having the space to do the things she wants. Meeting and working with people she admires, having creative freedom . . . these are aspects of her working and social life that are more valuable than money. Bunga's sense of ambition is rooted, she relates, in a childhood incident involving a drum kit.
"When I was 11, my mum bought me drums, which I loved to play, and I remember in high school I joined a band with a bunch of boys. One afternoon, I was kicked off the drums by some of the blokes, and that made me so angry. I've never been the same since that experience. I went home and cried, and told myself that something like this was never going to happen again - from now on I was going to do certain things my way, and would not be told what to do by a bunch of bozos. That was a very motivating experience!"
As was her resolution in wanting Birds to be quite different from her previous albums. But Runga didn't want to make another "singer-songwriter" album, which by its very nature defines (or at least implies) a particular style of writing. "I wanted to make sure the record had some sort of identity, whether it be to people's tastes or not. To be a singer-songwriter these days is to be generic and styleless."
Had she been defined with the first two records? Yes, she says. "When we were touring in America last year, Neil Finn and I were talking about the making of Birds, about making recorded music have a live feel, to have the music going all the way with one mood, which in this case is quite serious. That's a bold thing to do across an entire album, because there's nothing jaunty about the music at all.
"The mark of a good record is that it doesn't try to be all things to all people; going all the way with one feeling and being brave about it is surely a good thing. You can't please everyone all the time, anyway, so you might as well go with your own flow. To have a definite notion of what you want to be is not at all bad."
According to Runga, most artists have one thing, one idea, and they make a career and (occasionally, possibly) great work out of following it. "You're always painting yourself, at least if you're doing it honestly. After 10 years of trying to find a sound, it's just occurred to me that it's OK to do what I do."
Which is? "It's the bittersweet love songs," she replies, still jetlagged, still bearing up professionally, but looking as if she could crumple at any second. "It isn't cut and dried, it's kinda complex, but it's definitely both sour and sweet. It's difficult to define, I suppose, but I'll get to it.
"Am I a self-defining kind of person? I try not to be, but with any sort of creativity there is a tendency to navel gaze. I suppose when you sit down to write songs you're navel gazing, although I don't think you should do it. That said, I'm a horrible over-thinker - so I don't agree with myself at all!"
Birds is released today. Bic Runga performs at Róisín Dubh, Galway on May 19th; Dolan's, Limerick on May 20th; The Village, Dublin on May 22nd; and Crúiscín Làn, Cork on May 23rd
