Ladyhawke: London will 'never be home'

Ladyhawke at the 2009 NZ Music Awards. Photo / NZ Herald

She might live in London, but Ladyhawke promises it will never replace New Zealand as home.

The international singing star said she liked living in the UK but it was a means to an end.

"London for me is a workplace, it'll never be a home, it's just somewhere where I come and I'm just busy the whole time. I like it for that reason."

Ladyhawke - real name Pip Brown - says the last time she returned to her hometown of Masterton was for Christmas and New Year.

"A bunch of my friends from Auckland came down and stayed at my parents' house - we had a lot of fun," she said.

But she admitted there wasn't much to do there.

"There's a bowling alley there now, there never used to be a bowling alley in Masterton ... now there's something to do if I feel like going out.

"Otherwise it's just going for drives or basically drinking, hanging out, going to the Tui brewery," she joked.

The 32-year-old is back in the UK for the release of her second album, Anxiety. She said it was a lot darker than her self-titled 2008 debut "maybe not sound-wise but lyrically I just felt like I wanted to try a bunch of different new things".

The album draws its name from the pressure she felt to follow the success she had with her first release.

"By the time I'd come to start the new album I'd had a lot of time by myself just thinking ... a bit too much and you know, everyone was just wanting me to hurry up and I didn't like the pressure.

"I started writing the record and about halfway through people started asking me what I was going to call the album, like my managers and stuff, and I would jokingly say I'm going to call it Anxiety so just leave me alone. And then at the end of it I just thought it was a perfect title."

Brown said the name was a way of poking fun at herself.

"I can be pretty anxious at the best of times, I knew it would make my friends laugh."

Brown toured her first album until the middle of 2010 before returning to New Zealand and spending 18 months in Auckland.

"It was really nice, I'd never lived in Auckland before and at the same time a lot of my friends moved there who I hadn't seen in a while," she said.

Life back in London was a lot busier than here - and being recognised was very different too.

"When I get recognised here [in London] it's always somewhere really random.

"I was walking down Oxford St the other day and some guy ran up to me. He was on the phone and he ran up and he goes, 'Pip Brown!' And I was like, 'yes,' and he was like, 'I love your music, I'm a massive fan and I just wanted to say that,' and he shook my hand and then ran off, it was really short and sweet."

Brown has just finished touring Anxiety in the UK. She will return to New Zealand next month for concerts in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.