A Minuit silence

Minuit, from left: Paul Dodge, Ruth Carr and Ryan Beehre, have released their second album, The Guards Themselves

Ruth Carr has a problem with being the singer for Minuit. It's not just that she knows her distinctive sweet-to-sinister vocals aren't exactly NZ Idol material. It's the job description. "I don't actually think of myself as a singer. I think of myself as a person who sings," she says from Kaiteriteri Beach.

She's up the Tasman Bay coast from hometown Nelson with another third of the electropop trio Paul Dodge (also her hubby) on a summer weekend break from their base in Wellington. "I know the limitations of my voice, I know I am not going to pull out a song that goes seven octaves."

But there have been other drawbacks to the job fronting Minuit (pronounced "Minwee") as it headed to second album The Guards Themselves, a dazzling set which fulfils the promise of 2003's debut The 88.

For one thing, Carr lost her singing voice last year care of a paralysed vocal cord. It effectively put the band on pause for much of 2005. And with doctors warning Carr that her singing voice might not return, came the possibility the group would end. "It was such a heart-breaking time," says Dodge. "It was like 'this Minuit thing is cool but can we let it go? How much do we really want to do it?' "

Carr, though, says she was more ambivalent.

"If all I wanted to be is a singer, then it would have been a tragedy. But because it wasn't, it was liveable."

Fortunately, Carr had recorded her vocals for the album before her larynx gave out. Which means, while there were no second takes, Dodge and Minuit's other third, Ryan Beehre, could keep working on the album which they originally intended to release last year.

Dodge: "It wouldn't have been the ideal situation but maybe it has worked out for the better. Maybe that adds some uniqueness to it as well."

Carr's voice has now returned which means the band can tour again in support of an album which is, at times, just as excitable and hydraulic as its predecessor.

But it also shows the group has mastered the art of marrying their electronic influences to songs where the emotion more than matches the voltage of their delivery. They now sound like a band built around a voice in like the Eurhythmics did or Goldfrapp does now, rather than adhering to the dance/electronic genre of their beginnings.

Dodge: "To be honest this is what Minuit always was, but now we're getting a bit braver to do the things that we wanted to."

When the trio started out in Nelson, Carr was drummer, Dodge bassist and Beehre guitarist. Along came the mid-90s wave of British acts - the Prodigy, Tricky and others - making electronically based, rock-fired kind-of-dance music and the trio was hooked. The band started finding their feet at local venues as well as making appearances at the once-annual Golden Bay dance event, The Gathering, where they first found themselves a little at odds with the prevalent DJ culture.

Dodge: "For us to have mucked around in Nelson for three years trying to get these electronic instruments to make an actual sound, I think it has helped us come up with a thing that is our own.

"When we first started in the early days people would stop dancing when we came on and we were so offended.

"It's like the whole point is to keep people dancing but we realised later that's actually a compliment from people who have been lost in their own world to this DJ thing.

"But when Minuit comes on there is actually something to watch - there is the front person who is communicating to us." Carr: "We've had people say 'you're not bad for a band from the provinces' and all these really funny things."

When she and Dodge shifted to Auckland for a time, Carr says she remembers encountering a local musician who told her his group had been together for a year - but if they didn't score a record deal soon, they would be quitting music.

"And that seriously stunned me. We played together for three or four years before we even thought of doing albums. It never crossed our minds which sounds really stupid now.

"But I think it made us less stressed about it all. You just played your music."

Or in Carr's case developed from down-the-back drummer into an increasingly theatrical frontwoman. "When I am on stage people who know me, know that is not the Ruth they hang out with. When I sing I am really aware that I am not keeping it real so to speak, I am keeping it unreal.

"It's still Ruth but it's the Ruth that lets me be able to sing on stage because it's not something that I could do if I was being myself.

"When I'm doing a show it's like you open a little door that you keep a puppet in and you bring her out and so you can do all that."

And maybe her percussive past explains her distinctive vocal style. "When the guys give me a snippet to make something with, the rhythm of it is what will give me a tune as opposed to finding the notes. So I wonder if that is because I'm a drummer."

Lyrically, the guys leave it up to Carr's free-ranging imagination too.

"Yeah I'm not singing their stuff," she laughs. "Have you heard the words guys make up these days? Sometimes I think it's so banal and inane it shocks me."

Carr has a few other problems being the singer in Minuit. She's not sure she wants the band to go from its bubbling-under status to a fulltime concern. Though she's looking forward to possible overseas musical excursions.

"I like it to be part of my life, I don't think I would cope very well if it was my life."

And hey, she's always got a trade to fall back on - she's a builder, and once had a job she hated as a social worker.

She built kitchens while living in Auckland and if you sat for long enough during the end credits of King Kong you would have seen her name among the set construction crew.

"I found that so thrilling and I'm a nothing. On a scale of film wankers being a hammer hand is pretty much nothing."

Though being in front of Minuit still sounds more dangerous than being behind a circular saw - at a gig in Christchurch last week she chipped a tooth on her microphone. There was blood and pain.

"It was halfway through our set and I was thinking 'Oh I wonder if ACC is going to pay for this?'

"But then I looked in the hotel mirror afterwards and thought 'no actually, I think my teeth look straighter. I am down with that self-dental work.' "

So it's not just her vocal cords shell be risking on Minuit's national tour in coming weeks. "No that'll be me - smashing my teeth at a concert near you." 

LOWDOWN


WHAT: Minuit, Nelson-born electro trio and "breaks banditos" WHO: Ruth Carr (singer), Paul Dodge and Ryan Beehre (instruments)


ALBUMS: The 88 (2003), The Guards Themselves (released Monday)


TOUR DATES: bFM Summer Series, Albert Park, Feb 26; Catalyst, Hamilton, Mar 10; Littlewood Festival, Katikati, Mar 11; Rising Sun, Mar 25;