The Balancing Act

She was one of the biggest names in New Zealand pop but Margaret Urlich's career has had its ups and downs. Now, the expatriate singer tells RUSSELL BAILLIE, she's releasing a homesick sort of album.

Margaret Urlich has a new album. Nothing remarkable in that - it's what our export-quality pop stars are supposed to do.

It's just that almost everything about the fourth long-player to bear the solo Urlich name is quite different.

Different approach, different motivation, different circumstances, different aims, different scenery.

Well, it is a happily different stage in the singer's life, as can be heard in the background by the squealings of 3-month-old daughter Ava in the arms of her father, Urlich's partner George Gorga. He's an Aussie sound engineer. They've been together for seven years.

Being pregnant with her first child and the recording of album Second Nature - a collection of New Zealand pop classics - largely coincided in what she jokes was a particularly productive year.

The album has as its artwork a series of New Zealand landscapes by Auckland painter Justin Boroughs, as well as some childhood photos of Urlich and family.

Oh, and a recent shot of her lying prone in long grass: "I was eight months pregnant then, trying to camouflage the bulge. It's very uncomfortable lying like that," she laughs.

It might be said that the new album brings Urlich some sort of full circle to the days when she and the rest of When the Cat's Away were the biggest live thing in local pop. The all-gal troupe endlessly toured the country with a high Kiwi content in their set of cover versions.

Or, as it's her first album after being dropped by the Sony label, it might also be said that Second Nature is a deliberate way of getting back into the limelight, on this side of the Tasman at least.

Not that she totally minded being let go by the corporate giant after the last two of her three solo albums sold diminishing fractions of the numbers achieved by her hit debut Safety in Numbers (240,000 copies in Australia and New Zealand).

"It was good because the relationship had gone a bit sour, a bit tired. In a way, I wanted to get out as well.

"I know there are artists who do fabulous albums and then a couple of albums down the track they are not fabulous, because they are not in the same spot they were when they started.

"They are not hungry any more they don't have much to say anymore and that is how I felt. By the third album I thought, 'I don't really have much more to say.'"

But Urlich's motivation on Second Nature, it seems, is just to keep her recording career ticking over, ease herself back into it after the break and have some fun.

And perhaps do all that outside the pop business loop - the album's executive producer is Auckland easy-listening mogul Murray Thom who, when he was New Zealand managing director of CBS (later Sony), signed Urlich's first band, Peking Man.

Thom initially suggested Urlich do a jazz album, an idea which didn't interest her.

"I love jazz songs and I have done quite a few gigs, but it really is a kiss of death for any contemporary career you want."

Up came the idea for the New Zealand songs collection.

"I wasn't ready to do an original album. I wasn't feeling very inspired, I suppose, and this seemed like a really good idea.

In a way, it's quite self-indulgent because it's a chance to sing some really great songs that I love and that I grew up with, and have a great time in the studio."

The studio was, in fact, an add-on to Urlich and Gorga's home in Bowral in the southern highlands of New South Wales.

"It was really nice recording there because it was almost like singing in my lounge room. I'd go in there with my slippers and dressing gown sometimes, or I could sing at 3 in the morning if I felt like it."

And find time for other things - Urlich says Ava was conceived after she'd finished three songs. Towards the end of the recording Urlich found herself a little more breathless during vocal sessions because of her condition.

As for the songs - most of which appeared in TimeOut's "Te Pop" cover story last month - the 11 tracks on the finished product came from 30 to 40 songs she demo-recorded.

"Some of the older songs that I liked - La De Das songs, Avengers songs and Fourmyula songs - they didn't really translate and didn't sit well with me.

"There are some rockier tracks that I didn't interpret very well. So it's by no means my definitive best songs - they are just the best songs that I could do, that I could do justice to."

Some of the tracks, like Shona Laing's Glad I'm Not a Kennedy or Dave Dobbyn's Whaling, are closely identified with their writer and a specific time. Surely it's a perilous exercise trying to reinterpret them?

"It is, but I kind of went into it thinking I had a lot of respect for the writing and for Shona and for the song, and so I really wanted to just do it how I thought it would sound good.

"But this is not about better versions of the songs because you can't do better versions of these songs. Like you say, the originals are definitive and you can't do them better. So I would not be as vain or as arrogant to say I am doing better versions.

"All I wanted to do was sing some really good songs. I didn't lose much sleep over it."

The exercise had its own lessons.

"Demoing and reconstructing all those songs really taught me a lot about really good songwriters, and there are some great songwriters from New Zealand. It gave me new respect for great songwriting."

Yes, she agrees, there are echoes of When the Cat's Away. "But that was always just a fun thing to do, and it was never going to be a recorded thing. Damn, we could have been the Spice Girls. We should have pursued it," she laughs.

If something like that had happened, Urlich would probably be even more of the recovering pop star than she is now.

Looking back at her decade and a half-long career, she laughs it's been characterised by a really quick ascent, a plateau, then a long, gradual decline.

Then again, she never had any expectations. When Safety in Numbers went triple platinum, she laughs again, the only way was down.

But she learned some lessons that have helped to achieve her sense of balance.

First, how the music industry works; now, how she can make it work for her.

"Also I learned about myself. A big trap for a lot of singers and songwriters and people in the public eye is: tying your self-esteem to the success you are having is such a bad trap. It's great when you are doing well, but when you are not doing well it can really be devastating to you personally.

"After the second album which didn't do too well - in the scheme of things I sold about 70,000, which is still pretty good but comparatively it was a failure - I felt terrible.

"I thought, 'Oh, I failed, I am no good.' One minute I was God's gift; the next minute I didn't get invited to all the A-list parties any more.

"You have to see that as the bullshit of the whole industry and there is a lot of bullshit in the industry. You've really got to look at yourself and say, 'That's not me, that's the sales.'

"What is me is the creative input into the album and I like myself whether this album is successful or not.

"Now I am not so on-the-edge with my career. I can honestly say I love this album but everything is not invested it - so it will probably do really well."

Anyway, there's other things to worry about these days - like the little girl who, by now, is going for a few high notes herself.

"That's right, I've got a baby and a family. It does put things into perspective. And being in your 30s, dare I say it. I guess you are more comfortable with yourself. It's not as exciting as your 20s, though. But then it's not as traumatic either."

* Second Nature is out now. This week also marks the third annual New Zealand Music Week.