Brooke Fraser is ready for Asia

MANILA, Philippines - Brooke Fraser’s name might not roll off the tongue as easily as the way names of other foreign artists do among Filipino music fans. However, in Europe and America, she’s already been touted as the biggest recording import from New Zealand since Bic Runga, the voice behind the hit song Sway.

But labels — she’s also called the Kiwi Norah Jones, et al. — are things that the 28-year-old singer-songwriter hardly takes seriously. In an exclusive phone interview, Brooke told The STAR, “It’s very flattering, but as an artist, you have to take everything that’s being said about you with a grain of salt. I don’t go looking for good articles or good words about me, (let alone) allow them to go to my head.”

The daughter of a famous Kiwi rugby player, Brooke is a classically trained artist, having studied the piano from aged seven to 17 after her mother discovered her plunking out “do-re-mi” on the piano keys when she was two.

She is, however, self-taught on the acoustic guitar, and has never undergone formal lessons in voice. She started out as Christian/Gospel singer, but hit the mainstream in her hometown in 2003 shortly after signing up with the Sony-BMG record label. Her first album was What To Do With Daylight, which debuted at No. 1 and achieved gold status on the same week. All five singles from that album reached Top 20 in NZ charts. It eventually scored seven times platinum, selling over 100,000 copies in NZ alone. Following its release, Brooke toured Australia and NZ to front such big-name American acts as John Mayer and David Bowie.  

In 2006, she released her second album Albertine, which was inspired by an earlier trip to Rwanda, Africa to visit her sponsored children (she’s an advocate of the child sponsorship mission of World Vision) including one named Albertine. The album was recorded in the US and enlisted the help of musicians who have had worked alongside top US artists. In 2008, Albertine broke into Billboard’s Top 200 at No. 90. It also led to a multi-city US tour.

But, after a backbreaking tour of two years, Brooke went home drained and burnt-out. She reckoned that because her two albums were largely heavy and emotionally charged, as she sang about very personal events and experiences, things naturally took a toll on her.

She decided to take the time off to recoup. Looking back on how she was able to emerge out of that creative slump, Brooke shared, “It’s definitely an interesting place to be in for a musician wherein you’re sick of music or you’re sick of your own music. So, I thought I needed a break. I stayed at home and surrounded myself with friends and people I care about. I was just cooking and cleaning (laughs) while trying to get back on my feet and write again.”

The result was the 2010 third album Flags — her undoubtedly most successful album to date. Attending the Coachella Music Festival in California the year before also turned out to be her “aha moment,” wherein watching the performance of one of her favorite bands, Fleet Foxes, provided the defining experience that told her she couldn’t imagine a life (and career!) not pursuing music.

She recalled,“(Frontman) Robin Pecknold began to sing and the purity of his voice seemed to melt away every memory of trauma and disillusionment. Then the other voices joined his and it all felt so human and honest; I and everyone around me was enthralled. We were all being spoken to, and we were all listening. It was a moment where I remembered the power of music as a language, a connector. I remembered that I’ve been given the gift of speaking a particular dialect of this language and realized I didn’t have the option of being resigned to silence and I didn’t want it.”

Flags was recorded in Hollywood in the summer of 2010 and released in October of 2010. Brooke has since held sold-out tours in the US, Australia and New Zealand. Flags reached the No. 1 spot on the New Zealand album chart, No. 3 in Australia and entered at No. 59 on the Billboard 200 in America and climbed as high as No. 3 on the US iTunes album chart. The album has already gone Gold in Australia and 3x Platinum in New Zealand.

The first single off the album, the bouncy and high-energy Something in the Water, became a radio hit worldwide. For one, it was added twice to the BBC Radio 2 A-list rotation.

After her first foray into Europe last March and April, Flags debuted last month as No. 6 in Germany, No. 33 in Austria and No. 24 in Switzerland. Her second album was released in four countries only, but her third work, as of this writing, would have been released in over 30 countries.

Her album has already earned its ample share of raves, with critics describing it as having “stunning lyrical imagery” that complemented Brooke’s “ethereal and breathy performances.” She has said, “I am still pinching myself that things are going so well and aware that there is lots of work to be done… it highlights the responsibility and (what) great thrill it is to be a songwriter.”

The other tracks in the album include Betty (co-written with Switchfoot’s Jon Foreman and Ben West of Detroit indie duo The Real Efforts of Real People), a thinly-veiled metaphor for things she fears people might see. Ice On Her Lashes takes on a reflective tone on the cycle of grief. The title track Flags, on the other hand, is a meditative piece on justice. The songs, overall, come across as dreamy, soaring yet pondering. Noticeably, they are less personal this time around, but only in the sense that she is more narrative in this album, using vibrant characters to tell the songs’ stories. But given her gift for storytelling, she succeeds in making the songs emotionally resonate with the listeners.

Asked what was her songwriting process was like, she said: “It’s a different experience every time, but one thing is constant and that is I need to be still and relatively isolated.”

Brooke, who now lives in Sydney, Australia with her musician-husband, added, “It’s very difficult — actually impossible — to write when you’re on tour. So I come home and try to get away from everything.”

Nevertheless, the album’s accolades could be a vindication of sorts of her shift to a more folk-alternative sound from the folk-pop flavor of her earlier works. “This record is my most folk record to date. The songs in my past albums were more pop,” she admitted.

After US and Europe, it’s time for Brooke to conquer Asia. She is scheduled to do a series of performances that will bring her to Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and the Philippines this month. Catch her at the Victory Center in Festival Supermall, Alabang on Aug. 16.

But it will not be her first time in the country. In 2007, she came here in support of the projects of an NGO called Opportunity International. She said of her visit, “We went to Manila and Boracay to look at certain micro-enterprises. And I remember you have some really weird food because we went to this fastfood chain wherein they sold ice cream that’s flavored with some sort of vegetable (laughs). My impression from that trip is that Filipinos are incredibly warm and friendly.”

For Brooke, being able to explore places and meet new people is one of the most exciting perks of being a musician. “The past years of my life have been on the road. For me, it’s incredibly exciting. I am a proud New Zealander and I’ve very lucky to travel the world because of my music,” she concluded.

Flags is released under Sony Music, exclusively distributed by Ivory Music and Video.