As we sit down at a nearby cafe I ask Annabel Liddell how she's feeling.
"In a perpetual state of exhaustion sprinkled with a little bit of excitement," she replies, taking a long sip of her soy flat white.
Her answer - wordy and descriptive - stands in stark contrast to the forceful, fleeting speed of her band's music, which more often than not flies at you with all the pace and power of a king hit.
Take Matriarchy, the wild and raucous call to arms that announced their arrival on the Auckland scene back in 2015. The song explodes out of your speakers in under two minutes like a shaken-up can of energy drink.
"I know that busy is a buzzword these days," she says, before slipping into a cartoony voice. "I'm so stressed and busy, buuut... I really am busy. Oh, my days."
When we meet it's two days before the release of Bad Luck Party, Miss June's highly anticipated debut album, and Liddell's in demand, doing interviews, podcasts and photoshoots. She's also readying the band's next music video, sorting merch for their upcoming global tour and preparing to fly to Wellington for a gig before flying back for an Auckland show the next day - which reminds her that she also needs to get her guitar serviced.
She's even had her side hustle on, walking in six shows at New Zealand Fashion Week. Wait, what?
"I got back from tour really, really broke. I do a bit of modelling work for fun and I told my agent that I'd do anything, which meant that I did New Zealand Fashion Week last week," she says. "I love fashion, I love clothes, I love self-expression through your appearance... But similarly to the music industry, it's a very outdated industry and a lot of it is incredibly fickle."
In person, as in song, Liddell does not mess about. She says what she means, feels and thinks. And while that makes for brutally honest songs it doesn't always make her life easy.
"My life is a constant battle of trying to audit my reactions to be more appropriate in society but it's a struggle every single day," she says. "I think I'm an emotive person and a raw and honest person and I find that often people don't want honesty."
What do you mean, I ask.
"If I have a conflict in my life I'm the sort of person who will call you up on the phone and I want to talk about it then and there and then I want to get the f*** over it. That's the way we resolve conflict in the band and why we've been a band and been productive and pro-active for so long. When we have issues I am not someone who will stew on them and let them eat me from the inside out.
"I'm like, 'This is how I feel and I really feel like this right now!'" she continues, cartoonishly screeching that last bit, before saying in a gentle tone, "and the next day I'll be like 'I'm glad we had that talk.'"
She laughs, briefly, then says, "But people are different and that's what I'm learning. You can't expect people to react in the same way you react. Which I guess is why I make music to appeal to those people that do react the same way I do, or wish they could react that way, or hear it and think, 'That's how I feel but I've never said it out loud.'"
Which brings us back to the music. Bad Luck Party is a blazingly ferocious blast of indie-punk, high on energy, catchy melodies and brutal honesty. But, it's also been a long time coming. Four years since Matriarchy. What's been the hold-up?
"I did feel an urgency to release it but I, and the rest of the band, are incredibly pedantic about our recording process," she says, before explaining that this pedantry saw them spending a year writing the songs, another year recording the bones of the songs and then a final year adding overdubs (one song has more than 24 guitar tracks), recording vocals, mixing and mastering.
She reveals that throughout she'd be constantly revising her melodies and lyrics, throwing out complete vocal recordings months later to redo them. The band also went on effects-laden journeys of discovery, with Liddell saying, "The boys have a beautiful ability to go full circle and then come back to the original idea that I told them to do in the first place! But that process getting back to the original idea can be the important part."
She also tells me that they even had the album mastered twice, at their own expense, as they weren't pleased with the first attempt.
"We got to the point of realising we had to stop," she says. "We just had to put this out.
"This is our first album and they say you have your whole life to record your first album and a year to record your second. We took that quite literally."
The other reason for the delay was that Liddell had to fit Miss June around medical school, from which she recently graduated.
That's a helluva contrast I say, the rigidity and structure of medical school and the chaotic energy of punk.
"It's so funny people see it like that, it's so not like that," she replies.
"Whoever thinks the music industry is chaotic and raw is an idiot, no offence," she says, looking directly at me in a way that makes me feel a little like an idiot but somehow not offended, "and whoever thinks medicine is structured is... an idiot. The things I have seen during my medical degree... it's absolute bloody chaos half the time.
"Hospitals work off a system of communication, trust and multiple disciplines working together. It's not some big organised thing, it's literally people helping people. Whereas music is incredibly structured. You write an album, release the single, go on tour, play these songs at your show. We're trying to navigate the music industry in a way that feels authentic and to be ourselves but there's rules, regulations, and people in power in every single area of life once you get to a certain degree of professionalism and proficiency. So, if anything, my medical degree has hugely benefitted me in dealing with contracts and deals and that sort of stuff. At the same time, my music and creativity and getting to know people and seeing areas and other walks of life have really helped me in my medical life."
Speaking of that creativity, what is it that inspires you, I ask.
"Just my crazy old life," she answers, a wide grin taking over her face, "And my crazy old brain."
LOWDOWN
Who: Annabel Lidell, vocalist and guitarist for punk band Miss June
What: Their long-awaited debut album Bad Luck Party
When: Out now
MORE:
As well as talking to TimeOut, Miss June also headed up to Auckland's legendary Roundhead Studios to take part in the second season of Hauraki's Locals Only podcast and video series. The band blazed through their new electric singles Best Girl and Enemies on film, before Annabel Liddell sat down with Hauraki's Angelina Grey and Tom Harper for a comprehensive 40-minute interview. Learn everything you wanted to know, and a whole lot you didn't - did you know Liddell has sawn a man's leg off? - by pointing your internet device here.
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