Bic's leaving home

By ELEANOR BLACK

Bic Runga is eyeing my car with doubt. She has a suitcase, two guitars, several carry bags and a tall stylist to fit in the two-door hatchback.

She decides the stylist will have to call a taxi and we're off, gingerly backing down her narrow driveway and swinging on to a winding Titirangi road. Moments later we've stopped again, to negotiate with a firetruck blocking our way.

"Firemen know they're cool, don't they," says Runga. "You see them sometimes in their fire engines, pouting."

She asks if we can stop at an art gallery on the way to Grey Lynn, where she is meeting her manager, Campbell Smith. Her boyfriend has spotted a series of paintings he likes and wants to buy one but needs Runga's approval. She likes the work but not the materials - enamel on wallpaper. "I think we can do better," she says before pulling out her cellphone to deliver the verdict. "What do you reckon?"

Back in the car, Runga plays with the dashboard ornament. She seems nervous about today's flight to Australia, where she will spend five days promoting her second album, Beautiful Collision, before flying to the US for a month of the same.

She brightens when she sees her travel buddies - backing band Goldenhorse, sister Boh (lead singer of Stellar) who is going for the shopping, and stylist Karen Inderbitzen-Waller, who has bad news. A bag of clothes from Dunedin fashion house Nom D which were meant to be delivered last night were left at the courier depot. They will have to be sent to Melbourne.

Luckily Inderbitzen-Waller is lugging a case packed with filmy little numbers from Zambesi and Kate Sylvester. The first day in Melbourne will be spent planning ensembles for the 40 interviews Runga has with radio, print and television journalists.

Flipping through a printout of Smith's itinerary, the singer shrinks under her calf-length overcoat.

I T'S some days before Runga's departure. In the boardroom of her record company, she sits arms wrapped around her body like a scarf, struggling to imagine why people would want to read about her.

She is in the thick of New Zealand promotion for Beautiful Collision. It's been nearly five years since the release of her debut Drive, which went on to sell 90,000 copies, becoming the biggest selling album in New Zealand by a New Zealander. With single Get Some Sleep serving notice of her return, Beautiful Collision has sold 15,000 copies in its first three days on shop shelves, and this week bumped long-stayer Eminem off the top spot in the New Zealand charts.

She rates the new album's craftsmanship far above her debut, but is not satisfied. She doesn't even like her music, she says with a shrug. In her estimation, the whole female singer-songwriter thing has been done to death. If this album doesn't take off, she is going to learn to embroider.

Runga presents a convincing argument on why an interview with the person who invented the bullion knot, an embroidery stitch which produces a fat worm-like coil of thread, would be more interesting than one with her. Her eyes light up with enthusiasm when she talks about the bullion knot person and shift away like guilty thieves when it's time to to talk about herself.

Pity Runga then, because New Zealanders are fascinated by the enchanting 26-year-old Maori/Chinese singer with the heartbreaking voice. Speculation over the five-year gap between Drive and Beautiful Collision has raised expectations for this follow-up, especially when it comes to the American market, which got a taste of Runga with the sleeper hit single Sway, that made its way on to the soundtrack for the successful teen comedy American Pie.

Of the New Zealand musicians working today, she is seen as having the best chance of making it big in the US, one reason the yawning gap between albums has been such a disappointment for fans and some music industry insiders.

It took three years of solo slogging to get the album right, as Runga polished her lyric-writing and instrumental skills. She got serious about the piano, drums and guitar and more selective about her turn of phrase, aiming to make every word convey as much as possible. She learned how to produce.

There was an experiment with rock and dance music that went awry. There was a self-imposed isolation and pep talks with mentors like Tim Finn and Sony Music New Zealand managing director Michael Glading, who told her she was better than she thought she was. There were the tours and album with Finn and Dave Dobbyn, which helped her to reclaim her groove. There was an eleventh-hour intervention by sister Boh, who had lived through the second album nightmare and knew there was life on the other side.

And now that Beautiful Collision is topping the charts, Runga wants to forget about it, not to sit down and relive the angst. She stares at the wall while she offers meandering opinions about the album, then turns apologetically to ask, "Does that make sense?" "Do you know what I mean?" "What do you think?"

At one point she is so uncomfortable she bangs her right arm on her right thigh and blows her cheeks up with air.

Runga does not like giving interviews, or not the ones she has been giving about why, why, why it has taken so long to finish this album. "Do people think I've been smoking pot the whole time?" she says with frustration. It doesn't help that she has read recent stories about herself and been embarrassed by the impression that she was depressed and lonely travelling between Auckland, Los Angeles and New York with her hard drive tucked under her arm.

"I would hate for anyone to be sorry for me," she says with a laugh, throwing her head towards her lap and then peeking through her shoulder-length hair.

In the self-penned press release that accompanies the album, she reassures us further. It lists amusements other than music which give her pleasure: toast, Mojito cocktails, Chanel eyeshadow, Cuban cigars, clothes by Commes des Garcons, shoes by Costume Nationale and the Marianne Faithful autobiography.

"Most of the musicians who really blow me away are either dead or over 50 ... I get my kicks from other things," she writes. "Inspiration comes from weather, the sky, clouds, a beautiful piece of fabric, a texture, the way light will catch someone's face and make them look different for a second."

P RETZELS are passed around the taxi bus. Runga is talking about literature and film. She's reading a biography about tragic jazz singer Billie Holiday and recommends the Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane, which, like many before her, she deems a work of art. Her cheery stylist, who says she can talk to anyone about anything, is describing her large fragrance collection.

Inderbitzen-Waller will double as a personal assistant in Australia. Runga is relying on her conversational skills at record company dinners: "I never have anything to say."

The stylist has her own admission: "I was really flattered when Bic asked me [to work for her] because she has got such a style herself. When I met her, she was wearing a Vivienne Westwood cape and I thought, 'What do you need me for'?"

B ACK in 1999 when Runga started thinking about the second album, she envisioned an edgy rock effort, something her heroes Neil Young and David Bowie might write if they were young women from New Zealand. But being a perfectionist and a realist, she saw that her best efforts at edgy were never going to meet her exacting standards, so she returned to what she does best - simple storytelling with well-chosen words and stick-in-your-head melodies.

The result is more sophisticated than Drive, with a fuller sound and less mournful lyrics. It stands to reason. After all, she was 17 when she started work on Drive and just 21 when it became the country's top-selling album by a New Zealander.

"You grow up a lot in five years. God, do you ever," she says with a laugh.

One thing that has not changed in the past five years is Runga's attitude towards her work - low-key to the point of disdain.

Glading, who has known Runga since she was signed to Sony at age 19, says her evident lack of interest in success is genuine, if perplexing for anyone who might expect the big music star to act like a big music star. He puts it down to the huge demands she makes of herself. She is a high achiever who will never be satisfied with her work, he says, and that is why he was willing to give her time to experiment.

Glading admits there were times when he despaired of ever getting a second album made, and when he doubted Runga's direction.

"I have been way more patient than I would with other artists ... I heard stuff when it was in progress and it wasn't great. She's so bloody talented she could have pulled it off, but in my heart of hearts I thought we would end up with the record we did."

Boh Runga, who sings back-up on several Beautiful Collision tracks, postponed a trip to Malaysia to help out when her sister's confidence was at a low ebb.

"I think she just needed a second opinion. When you get so close to finishing you're thinking, 'Can I finish this now, satisfactorily?' Plus, it was good to order her around." Really? "Nah, have you seen her in action? You can't order her around."

It is testimony to Bic Runga's talent that New Zealand fans didn't give up on her while she was messing around with her hard drive, although Americans who liked Sway may have forgotten where it came from.

"She's kept her popularity despite her absence from the recording studio, in this business where there is no loyalty to anyone any more," says Glading with pride. "I can only put it down to her uniqueness. She's so unusual, and I mean that in the best possible way. She is charming and quizzical."

A T THE airport, "camp mother" Boh Runga takes charge of check-in, collecting passports and counting pieces of luggage. Her little sister is jangling - there are two tambourines in Runga's carry-on bag.

Almost unrecognisable in a furry beret and long scarf, she nonetheless attracts attention as she chirps "duty free, duty free". She wants a pair of ugg boots. Boh wants vodka.

Runga waits for the Goldenhorse boys, Ben King and Geoff Maddock, to wind tape around their guitars before handing them over to airline staff, and for the band's third member, Kirsten Morelle, to sort out a problem with her ticket.

Upstairs in the departure hall, Runga is chuffed when she finds a pair of handsome sheepskin-lined slippers for her boyfriend. "Do you know how hard it is to get good men's slippers?"

She returns to her group to find her stylist eating sushi and Goldenhorse heading off to find pizza. Runga, who is not the kind of girl to travel with an entourage, clearly likes having one. They form a protective bubble around her so she can ignore the stares from people who watch her move through the airport, coat flapping and tambourines tinkling.

After this trip Runga will again be travelling solo and - after shooting a video in New Zealand - heading back to the States for an indefinite period. She wanted to take the band to Los Angeles and New York but their first CD is released in October and they have promotional work to do. A man comes up and asks for a photo with Runga. She looks slightly uncomfortable when he hugs her, but she smiles and makes his day.