OCTOBER 13 2018 LISTENER 55
A
nika Moa is relentlessly honest,
relentlessly open, relentlessly
unfiltered.
She’s tried to convince me oth-
erwise; that she only ever shares “about
5% of what and who I am”. But come
on, she’s hurtling through life shedding
TV shows and albums that rely entirely
on her brash, charismatic, hilarious
personality.
Now, she has a second series of
interview show Unleashed, a self-titled
album and a new baby on the way, to be
followed by an album of lullabies she’s
“doing for selfish reasons – so I can help
get it to sleep”.
It might seem impossible to own
enough masks to be anything but herself,and, certainly, the new album doesn’t
seem to hold back 95% of anything.
It reasserts an Anika Moa familiar
to anyone who’s been listening to her
intensely personal songs since 2001’s
Thinking Room spawned Mother, or who
has heard her memories of her late father
on songs such as My Old Man and Running
Through the Fire.
But where Anika Moa the album differs
from Anika Moa the celebrity is in how
fragile her lyrics show her to be.
At the heart of her new album – and
placed at the end of the vinyl side one
for maximum effect – is Heavy Head, a
driving, grinding, screaming-guitar songabout regret that opens with a repeated, “I
hate myself”, and rolls out a crescendoing
wish-list chorus of how she longs to get
over her anger. Side two follows with Fade
Away, in which she surren-
ders to her lover, “All I want
is to taste your lips and to
fade away.”
Her explanation: “There’s
a deeper sense of personal
vulnerability to this,
because I’m more invested
in this life now with my
children and a partner. I
can’t be a rock star all my life – and I liter-
ally can’t be a star with kids and a family
and responsibilities.”F
amily is clearly at the heart of the
new songs. But despite her TV career
resulting in a higher profile, she’s not
worried about putting her loved ones in
the public eye via her songwriting.
When she listens to music, she doesn’t
care about the personas behind the songs,
simply the way she feels. She thinks her
new songs will speak for themselves.
Fortunately for her, the songs do stand
on their own. Punchy production from
American producer-drummer Brady Blade,The other side
of Anika Moa
The TV star returns as
soul-baring songstress
on an album recorded
in New Orleans.
“I can’t be a rock star all
my life – and I literally
can’t be a star with kids
and a family.”
MUSIC
by James Beleld
stunning musicianship from session play-
ers, including guitarist Doug Pettibone
and bassist Tony Hall, and eight days
of New Orleans studio time have given
Moa a brave and distinctly
American sound.
The weeping steel guitar
on Cry and Fire of Her Eyes
gives them a country edge,
and the outstanding I Don’t
Wanna Break Your Heart Any-
more sounds like Pat Benatar
covering Fleetwood Mac. It’s
all the result of Moa relin-
quishing control. “I thought, niks, drop it
and go with it ... it’s something I’d never
have done myself, but I just kept going,
and now I love it.”
It’s an album worthy of her love. She
knows her writing is therapeutic, that her
songs help her to “realise that it’s good to
be alive”, and, with Anika Moa, she’s also
found a sound that is the perfect foil for
her unfiltered style. lANIKA MOA, Anika Moa (Universal)
Anika Moa plays album release shows at
San Fran, Wellington, October 19; Galatos,
Auckland, October 26; and Blue Smoke,
Christchurch, October 27.Intensely personal: Anika Moa.