The Big Read: Brooke Fraser

Herald online

28 Dec, 2014 01:00 AM2 mins to read

New Zealand singer/songwriter Brooke Fraser.

Bringing you our favourite features from 2014. If you missed them the first time around, now’s the perfect time to catch up. And remember to come back tomorrow for the next instalment.

With a new album on the way and her first homecoming tour in years hitting the country's arenas in the New Year, Brooke Fraser talks to Lydia Jenkin about reinventing herself and her music.

She has an immediately recognisable face - those dark eyes with a cheeky glint, and distinctively large lips that break into a wide smile as she emerges through the doorway of the Auckland Art Gallery.

Brooke Fraser, one of New Zealand music's favourite daughters, looks great. Strong, sleek, eye-catching in her willowy-ness. And yet her friendliness is the overwhelming impression - she greets everyone with enthusiasm, and is chatty and inquisitive, asking almost as many questions as she answers.

She seems happy to be back in New Zealand, albeit briefly - her life over the past two years has involved making temporary homes in various parts of the world - Stockholm, London, New York - and now she has set up once again, with her husband Scott Ligertwood, in Los Angeles.

It makes sense when you're launching a new album internationally, assembling a new band, and working out a new stadium-sized live show, to be somewhere like LA.

"It's not the most inspiring city in the world, she's not a great beauty looks wise, but if you persevere, you find some gold in her. It's very sunny," she laughs, as she sits down with TimeOut in the atrium, ready to reveal the story of her new album.

That's the Brooke Fraser we're all familiar with - positive, thoughtful, charming, award-winning singer-songwriter, daughter of former All Black Bernie Fraser and, yes, Christian.

None of that has changed of course, but with her fourth album, entitled Brutal Romantic, we're about to see a whole new side of her.

"I really felt that Flags [her third album, released in 2010] was the end of a trilogy for me as an artist. I felt like I'd explored the folk pop singer songwriter world. I knew that I had always set my voice against really warm organic sounds, and I really wanted to experiment with setting my voice against different textures - spiky things and cold things and mechanical things, and bring out the tension and contrast and balance that could be enjoyed if I did that." ...