...Stolen Hill also revealed a songwriter at a personal crossroads. “The song ‘Stolen Hill’ was about the woman that I fell in love with, when I first realised I was gay, and it’s about the most pure love for someone, and the fact that if I died, she’d totally move on, and that’s okay,” she explains. “‘Picture me in the 70s’, I actually wrote that when I was 17… looking back on the lyrics, I realise I was probably actually gay back then,” she laughs. “It’s a special album for me.”...
...Stolen Hill gained mixed reviews: Russell Baillie in The New Zealand Herald called some material “an unlikely marriage of style and substance”, with Moa “over-reaching lyrically”, though he did see the album’s strengths; New Zealand Musician called the album “full of heartfelt meaningful tracks.”
To promote Stolen Hill, she embarked on a nationwide tour with her newly formed Plastic Tiki Band, before decamping to Monte Cecilia House as part of Bic Runga’s backing band for her Birds album (along with Neil Finn, Anna Coddington and Shayne Carter) – which also included a full Australasian tour.
In 2005, Moa also contributed to the recording of ‘Anchor Me’ (originally by The Mutton Birds) for Greenpeace’s 20th anniversary commemoration of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. Also involved in this recording were Kirsten Morrell (Goldenhorse), Che Fu, and Hinewehi Mohi, (among others).
Two years later, in October 2007, Moa followed up Stolen Hill with her third long-player, In Swings the Tide, which was inspired by the break-up of her relationship, and her father’s deteriorating health. Moa produced and mixed the country-tinged folk-pop album, and says it marks huge changes in her life.
“That’s when my dad died. And, I met my wife, who is now my ex-wife. And, it’s got a country twang, which I loved. The songwriting, it was just pop songwriting.”
In Swings the Tide showed Moa as a storyteller through song. “There’s a song I wrote for my dad, ‘My Old Man’, that took a year to write. It was the hardest song I ever wrote … I wanted to finish it before he died … It’s quite a harsh song because I basically say he came out of my life, he came into my life, he was a bit of a shit father, he’s a bit of a broken man, and he’s fuckin’ dying,” she says.
“It’s really hard to write lyrics about that, especially about someone about to die. And he loved it, he took it very well. I had a very open, honest friendship with him … I always said to him ‘I don’t see you as my father, I see you as this person I know and love, and who I adore, and who I’d do anything for … his inspiration … is in my music because I am him. I am my dad … I live my dad’s life except I don’t do drugs, or mushrooms or P!”
Moa toured the album nationally with long-term collaborators Chip Matthews and Nick Gaffaney, and it peaked at No.6, selling close to double-platinum, with much acclaim: the following year ‘Dreams In My Head’ was nominated for an APRA Silver Scroll, and she won Best Female Vocalist at the Vodafone NZ Music Awards.
2007 was a big year for Moa personally. She came out as lesbian, something she regrets not doing earlier. “I didn’t come out until I was about twenty-seven, which I quite regret,” Moa states. “I really wanted to own the fact that I’d turned gay, and I couldn’t.”
Moa’s next move was to write an album on the weighty theme of love. In 2009, Moa and new partner Azaria Universe (Angela Fyfe) were based in Melbourne, were Fyfe was working, and Moa, bored and lonely, started to write. “I wrote it in an apartment we were renting ... I was going to the gym quite a lot, and being really healthy, and not drinking. I quite enjoyed the whole process, except for the writing! I was like ‘I’m bored, I’m lonely’, and it pushed me to write that album”, she explains.
Many of the songs dealt with Moa and Fyfe’s relationship while lead single ‘Running Through the Fire’ was about the death of her father, and ‘Secrets and Lies’ was aimed at someone who had seriously annoyed her. The sound on Love in Motion was guitar-based rock, with layered vocals and guitars, as opposed to the acoustic, folk influenced In Swings the Tide. The recording took place over two weeks at Roundhead Studios, Boatshed Studios, and Radio New Zealand, with Moa producing the album with Andre Upston. The recording was a social experience – friends, family and Fyfe were all part of the process.
Moa then road-tested the finished songs on the Aroha tour, a joint 25-date tour in 2009 with Julia Deans, who was performing material from her upcoming album Modern Fables. Documenting the creation of the album, and Moa’s relationship with Fyfe, was the second documentary on her – In Bed with Anika Moa, for TVNZ’s Artsville. Moa rounded off 2009 by contributing backing vocals to the Dimmer album, There, My Dear, and played two South Island shows with friend Tim Guy.
Love in Motion, released in 2010, went Top 10 on the NZ album charts, and again met with positive reviews – many critics comparing Moa to rock-chicks Pat Benatar, Ladyhawke, and Sharon O’Neill. Moa toured the album with her band (including Geoff Maddock, Chip Matthews, and Nick Gaffaney) later that year, and won Best Female Solo Artist at the 2010 Vodafone New Zealand Music awards
That year, she and Fyfe entered into a civil union partnership, the couple becoming parents to twin boys in 2011...to be continued... - Amanda Mills and AudioCulture
trax:
01 Wise Man Say 02 Dreams In My Head 03 Miss Universe 04 The Blind Woman 05 In Swings The Tide 06 My Old Man 07 Day In, Day Out 08 Hangin' Around 09 Standing in this Fire 10 Honey, You'll be Alright 11 You're the Light 12 Thinking About Tomorrow
…served by Gaius…
...And as bizarre as his personality, which will be discussed later, the titles he gave to some of his pieces and in which Michael Naura in the program booklet of the 1979 Jazz Days, which, as an obituary, so to speak, devoted an entire evening to Mingus, were "too poetic Signs thickened moods" discovered: "Pithecanhtropus erectus", for example, "Wham Bam Thank You Ma'am", "All The Things You Could Be Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother", which already indicated in the title, da? it was created with the help of his psychoanalyst, or "Fables Of Faubus", the sarcastic reckoning with the governor of Arkansas, who was partly responsible for the fact that the National Guard had to escort colored children to school in Little Rock in 1957.
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