STACK NZ June 2016 Issue 74

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P each’s Castle, 12 Grimmauld Place,
Maurice Sendak’s mind; to this list of
chimerical locations we can now add
another: Hillside Avenue. The difference with
Ladyhawke’s imagined ‘safe place’ is, however,
that it also exists in reality.
“’Hillside Avenue’ is actually a street – it’s
basically the street I live on,” the lauded New
Zealand singer-songwriter, also known as Pip
Brown, tells us. “It is also this place I imagined
in my head. I’ve lived in the same [house] for
three years, and in the space of my living there,
I was in a really dark place and then all of a
sudden I was feeling amazing. I went through
all this at Hillside Avenue so I felt like that was
visit MUSIC FEATURE
16 JUNE 2016
MUSIC
WHERE
THE WILD
THINGS ARE
my sacred place,” she says.
Brown’s fresh new album Wild
Things could be most efficiently
described as your life’s soundtrack if
you lived on Sonic the Hedgehog’s
tropical, secret-laden, pixelated
Angel Island; as its central spot
of importance, Hillside Avenue
features pom-pom synths which
open out to a calypso beat in
the chorus, and a melody full of
aspiration and promise. “I’d wake
up and the sun was shining every
day; it’s so sunny in LA, and there
are lots of beautiful trees around my
house, and I’d just look out the window and…
I pretended it was this magical place,” Brown
says warmly.
Residing in LA sometimes feels magical for
the platinum-selling and the platinum-selling
Kiwi artist, and occasionally feels utterly alien.
“Living there has been so good for me, but
sometimes I just think it’s so funny I’m here,”
she says. “I’m not your typical Hollywood
gal. I can walk from my house to the Walk of
Fame in five minutes… I know everyone thinks
Hollywood is just a plastic place, but that’s
just one little aspect of it. There’s the whole
tourism thing… I understand because I feel like
I’m a lifelong tourist. I’m constantly in different
places with my bum-bag and my camera. The
important thing is that you have some close
friends there, and that’s really all you need.”
The tracks that Brown wrote and recorded for
Wild Things were birthed under the guidance of
producer Tommy English, whom the musician
met through her LA neighbour and tattooist icon
Kat Von D. English encouraged Brown to use
panpipes in the gorgeous Money To Burn (“We
were joking that we had to get some Toto-style
flutes into the album”), the cuica in Wonderland
(“It’s a Brazilian percussion instrument, it’s
in heaps of Paul Simon’s Graceland songs;
it sounds like ‘ooh-ooh-aah-aah!’ [imagine a
cartoon monkey noise –Ed]”), and the bongos
in Let It Roll. “Percussion is one of my favourite
things,” Brown says. “We did a lot of it live as
well; we just went to town.”
Meanwhile, Sweet Fascination encapsulates
everything WildThings is about:
it has very emotive synth lines
(think CHVRCHES), sparse pops
of digital keys, and terribly fearless
Sky Ferreira-style drums: a ticking
hi-hat and a thumping snare that
falls in pitch as it lifts the marimba-
tinged synths into the chorus. “It’s
about obsession, which is one of my
favourite things,” says Brown. “I’m
fascinated by unhealthy obsessions,
and how people become unhealthily
obsessed with other people, whether
they’re famous or not. You can delude
yourself into thinking something is
there that isn’t.”
Kiwi songstress Ladyhawke’s highly anticipated third album
WildThings was written and recorded in Los Angeles.
Pip Brown talks to Zoë Radas about how the magic and
strangeness of her new home informed her new record.
I'm fascinated by
unhealthy obsessions,
and how people become
unhealthily obsessed
with other people
Wild Things by
Ladyhawke is
out on June 3.
She's also touring in July;
check
for details.