Anika Moa "Songs for Bubbas" 2013

...“I just connected with him straight away,” Moa says of Mulholland, “Everything’s fifty-fifty. I wrote the songs. I wrote the melodies and the chords, and he wrote these beautiful, beautiful choruses … he’s a genius in my eyes. He helped me create new melodies and new paths in my songwriting.”
Queen at the Table is produced by Mulholland, and thematically focuses on Moa’s separation from Fyfe – especially in ‘Running’, and ‘These Lonely Tears I Cry For You’ – though the light of new love creeps into the album too...
...Moa finds writing about her life cathartic. “I think it’s a good way to get a sad, horrible, lonely message across,” she muses. “I don’t write about anything but what I’m doing at a specific time. So if I’m not doing to well at a specific time, I’ll write about it. I’m not shy to speak up about how I feel.”
Queen at the Table moves away from Moa’s familiar style of acoustic guitar based singer songwriter, embracing electronic, synth-based sounds, finding that she and Mulholland were on the same page. “We discovered along the way is that our love for guitar music had waned. And, we both liked music with quite a lot of electronic beats, and lots of keyboards. It’s a different world for me, because I’ve always just been a band chick, you know rock chick … I think it’s all about evolving as an artist and as a songwriter, and that’s exactly what I’ve done!”
Working with a new style and a new collaborator has changed Moa’s approach to songwriting, at least in structures. “I tend to do a normal pop-sense song, with verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus, this time around I wanted to say what I wanted to say. Do a catchy-as chorus, and just get out what I can. And bridges were very minimal. I also let Jol indicate where the song was going to go, you know, keep it a little bit spazzy.”
To further prepare the new material, Moa toured with Dave Dobbyn (her favourite, she says), Don McGlashan, and Supergroove as part of the 2015 Winery Tour, with Mulholland as musical collaborator.
The first review for Queen at the Table was a rare five stars from Gary Steel in Metro. “Many break up albums are just miserable,” he wrote, “but Anika has kept craft to the fore, never wallowing, always finding a way to universalise her experiences through performances that are skilfully executed as they are beautifully expressive. There’s pain here, but joy too, and it’s all wrapped up in pop songs with just a bit of R&B Diva running through them. Anika-style.”
Writing for NZ Musician, Amanda Mills agreed that it was a skilful take on electronic pop, concluding “it proves a successful artistic evolution for Moa – a musician unafraid to take a chance on the new.”...to be continued... - Amanda Mills and AudioCulture
trax:
01 Colours Are Beautiful 02 You Are My Sunshine 03 The Nigh Nighs Song 04 Animals in My Room 05 The Adventures of Barry & Taane! 06 Tahi, Rua, Toru, Wha 07 Oma Rapeti 08 Little Bird 09 Go to Sleep 10 Sweet Dreams 11 The Adventures of Barry and Taane (Part 2)
…served by Gaius…