Runga gives taste of her church tour

Reviewed by REBECCA BARRY

Cast in an eerie blue light and framed by a cavernous ceiling, Bic Runga cut an angelic figure on the stage of Grafton's Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Kiwi singer was home to perform a selection of songs from her upcoming 16-date, one-month Acoustic Church Tour, her first homeland gig since she moved to Paris eight months ago.

The idea was inspired by a performance she gave at the 18th century Union Chapel in London last year.

Members of the silently captive audience included media and music industry heads, including NZ Idol judge Paul Ellis, who signed her when he worked as Sony Music New Zealand's head of A&R.

Gripping her guitar and dressed demurely in a black velvet jacket and grey baggy pants, Runga opened with songs from her second album, Beautiful Collision, which has now reached the top 10 charts in Ireland, the top 30 in Britain and the top 40 in Italy.

She then invited guitarist Ben Maitland, aka Boxcar Benny from the Auckland band Boxcar Guitars, to join her as she ran through a range of songs from Get Some Sleep and Something Good to earlier hits Bursting Through and Drive.

In between she thanked the crowd nervously and spoke of the band she has formed out of Paris and Dublin.

"The album's doing pretty well so it's pretty cool," she said before introducing a technically difficult song: "It's in French so it could go either way."

The tour starts at the Tauranga Holy Trinity on April 21 and will travel from Auckland to Invercargill throughout May.

Afterwards, Runga will join her band for a tour of Britain.