If Brooke Fraser had known how her new album, Flags was about to be received in Australia on its national release, she probably wouldn’t have been so unsure of her potential to truly crack the Aussie market.
You see she heralds from New Zealand, a bizarre melting pot of creative talent, much like our own city. But if our artistic
expression is bred from isolation, theirs stems from the simple fact that New Zealand really is a whole other world.
It makes crossover success all that more challenging for NZ artists: yes they need to adapt somewhat, shrug off the Hobbit and sheep jokes, but they can’t compromise the unique magic and wonder that their land embodies and consequently enthuses them with. It’s something Fraser knows all too well: she isn’t about to compromise one ounce of her magic, for anyone.
‘I was 19 when my first album (What To Do With Daylight) came out and I had made all these songs in my bedroom, experimenting with learning how to write songs,’ Fraser explained, in Perth to promote her third album, Flags.
‘It was all very all over the place, made in four weeks. It was just kind of a giant experiment that worked really well in my homeland of New Zealand.
‘And where I come from is a place called Naenae, Lower Hutt, a poorer part of New Zealand,’ Fraser reminisced. ‘When I hit the charts and started getting sponsored it was by like Puma and another label that did long skirts with like numbers printed on them. So looking back my first album was a very awkward fashion stage for me.’
She soon blossomed and won two NZ Music Awards in 2004 before releasing her follow-up Albertine in 2006. Her sound maturing, she herself a musical sponge, drawing in a whole new world of music she’d never been exposed to before. Albertine debuted at No. 1 and reached five times platinum in NZ, cementing gold success for her there.
‘I kind of had my musical puberty after I was already an artist. After releasing my first album I was exposed to more music and more of the world than I ever had been beforehand. It was great.
‘So with the first two albums I think I was very much about painting a picture, but with this new one I wanted to prove myself as a writer. I wanted to experiment with narrative and telling stories. I didn’t want to make a clean record, I wanted to make it really human.’
The result is sublime. Ice On Her Lashes captures the persistency of grief perfectly while her personal fave, Crows and Locusts, is an accomplishment in song writing. There are sonic quirks Bat For Lashes would envy, while elsewhere she has a soaring vocality similar to that of ’90s indie pop darlings The Sundays.
The newfound charm comes from Fraser taking the helm and being her own producer for Flags. However, it may also come from her recent marriage, something that’s made her relax tremendously within herself.
This confidence has carried through into her look: gone is the girlish style. In its place stands an elegant woman, one who stares the camera down in the music video to her new single Something In The Water.
‘I think the fans in New Zealand were a little shocked by the transformation that’s taken place. I’ve grown up in the public eye, so when the video came out I think they were a bit “whoaâ€. I don’t think they really got it. But now they get it and it’s doing really well.
‘Australia, however, is embracing it. There’s more people turning up to the live shows, and it’s getting really good radio play. I’ve lived in Australia for almost seven years now. I married an Aussie and it feels like home. So if this song doesn’t work, I don’t know what will.’
She needn’t have worried at the time – Flags debuted two weeks later at #3 in the Australian charts, proving that this sunburnt
country is ready to embrace this enigmatic, other worldly girl.
Flags is out now through Sony Music.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
