|
Tearaway :: What to do
with daylight
March 2004, By Neil Young
In person BROOKE FRASER is relaxed and full of
laughter - and also slightly wary, looking over the rim of her cup of tea,
careful not to give too much of herself away.
Not because she has anything to hide. In fact, her music, with its cool,
delicate textures, has a rare honesty and emotional directness. More because
she'd prefer her songs to be the centre of attention - not herself.
Glancing at my dictaphone, she says, "I find it hard reconciling myself to the
idea that I'm going to be going around promoting my songs - that essentially,
I am the product.
"It seems really strange to spend your days going, 'Like me, like my songs.'
"I got into this because. it's just what I do, it's just who I am.
"I wish there was some way that heaps of people could hear my music and heaps of
people could come to the shows, and I could connect with these people, but. the
fame thing wasn't involved."
We take a collective sip of tea, dunk our biscuits.
"Am I sounding like a wanker?" she asks. "I think I am! I don't know. I just
love the part of a live show when it stops being about you. And it stops being
about your songs.
"And you and the audience are the same, and you're taken somewhere else."
The joys of distortion
Brooke learnt piano on an old upright her parents bought when she was 7. "I've
spent years of my life on that," she says.
She also taught herself to play guitar "because I wanted to write more upbeat
songs." Although she only has an acoustic at the moment, she's recently
discovered the joys of distorted electric guitar.
She pretends to strum a powerchord: "BERRRRRANG! I was like, 'I can see why boys
like this!'"
Distortion also played a part in her first ever recorded song. "That was when I
was 14 and this metal band asked me to sing some guest vocals on a couple of
tracks.
"We were in the studio and I was singing some songs for them and they said why
don't you put down one of your songs? So I did it on a little midi keyboard, and
they ended up putting it on the album, strangely enough."
As well as being a regular performer at Parachute since the age of 16, Brooke
also did really, really well at Rockquest.
"At that stage I didn't even know how to play guitar," she says.
"It was just me and my little keyboard songs. Got up at the heats and stuff,
with just this tinny little keyboard, and then I got through to the regional
finals.
"And then I won. And then I was just like, that's really weird."
"I love the part of a live show when it stops being about
you."
What are ya gonna do?
Fastforward a couple of years and Brooke's just released her debut album,
What To Do With Daylight.
The title "really sums up the essence of a lot of the songs," she explains.
"What I think the body of work really is about.
"I ended up using that line in [opening track] Arithmetic - but I
actually had it, and it was the name of the album, before I wrote the song."
She worked with an amazingly talented array of musicians on the album, including
Emmylou Harris' percussionist Brady Blade, who also produced, Ben King and Geoff
Maddock from Goldenhorse, and Spearhead bassist Carl Young.
Even Blindspott's Karl Viisini provides scratching on a remix version of the
first single, Better.
The video for Better seems to pick up at the end of Once Were
Warriors, with Temuera Morrison as Jake the Mus wandering through an empty
house, surveying the cost of violence.
But behind the scenes, says Brooke, "he's just really funny, just a hard case
and a crack up."
"He walks into the room on the set on the first day and he's like, 'Ahhh, you're
Brooke! I saw a photo of you and the first thing that I said to myself was,
'Look at that girl's feet!' What do you wear, girl - size 13 jandals?!'
Mystery
Does she have a favourite song on the album?
"At the moment, Mystery. Whenever I sing it or play it, I get the same
feeling, every time.
"I feel like it's kind of my battle song.
"It just reminds me (this is going to sound weird), it reminds me that there's a
reason that I'm here, and that I've got something to do, and that I am valuable
and I have got something to offer.
"Because it's often" - and her voice fades, almost lost to the hum of my
dictaphone and the pink of the fluorescent lights overhead - "'cause it's often
really easy to forget that."
What To Do With Daylight is out now.
|
