By RUSSELL BAILLIE
Julia Deans has a very fine guitar. It's a Fender Coronado from the late 60s. You don't see many of those around. Martin Phillipps of the Chills had a famous blue one. Deans' is red. Its hollow body and violin holes hides a fair bit of Deans' slight frame as commands centre stage for her band Fur Patrol.
Not that she's shy or needs to hide behind anything quite as big. On this night at Auckland's inner city rock HQ the Kings Arms — a rare northern excursion for the Wellington band — Deans certainly shows that. She has a voice which dwarfs her and her six-string as the band play the songs from debut album Pet.
On Holy — a song which sees her up for the Apra Silver Scroll Award on Monday — as her voice staggers into the bit which her la-la-las go deliberately, sneeringly, off-key, she smiles the smile of someone who is having a ridiculous amount of fun.
When it heads into Lydia, all doo-wop chords and bassline, Deans croons the verses and sways into the high-note choruses making the forlorn, "My baby ..." lyrics sound sweetly convincing.
And on the slow swishing waltz-time ballad Short Way To Fall, she starts out with an in-your-ear whisper and builds to a belt-out reminiscent of Chrissie Hynde.
This also means there's quite a band behind her in the combo of shaven-headed drummer Simon Braxton, seriously sideburned guitarist Steven Wells and — according to Deans and Braxton, though they were laughing at the time — "babe magnet" bassist Andrew Bain.
If Deans is getting much of Fur Patrol's spotlight, then at least, she has the defence that it was her idea in the first place.
Having spent some time in the hard-working, capital city Celtic rock band Banshee Reel, including a tour to Canada, Deans, of Irish-Scottish extraction, made a break free from the reel world four years ago to follow her own decidedly jig-free pop songwriting instincts.
Finding the three musicians via friends and friends of friends, initially as supporting players for demo recordings, something clicked and a real band formed instead.
Deans: "It's been quite a natural progression. We haven't gone out and decided, 'oh we want to play this kind of music.' Obviously, once it started taking off we thought should we just see how far we can take it. It's still our attitude."
Hometown gigs followed, then came a debut EP Starlifter which went top 20 in 1998. Then they recorded the album last year, shopping around the end result to various labels, finally finding a deal at Warner Music NZ, a label in an acquisitive mood after already scoring — via Australia — Wellington bands Shihad and Weta. Released last month, it's popped into the NZ top 10 and received glowing reviews.
Now Fur Patrol have just been to Oz for the first time, supporting American bohemian pop-rockers the Dandy Warhols which, in turn, has provided them with a fine warm-up to their exposure — a NZ tour with those aforementioned windy-city compatriots which started in New Plymouth on Thursday and sold out the Wellington Town Hall last night.
Deans is the only woman among the three bands on the tour. When she's making eye contact with the moshpit does she feel like the odd woman out?
"I tend not to think about it and I don't really take any notice of it. Don't really consider it a privilege or a chore. I don't think the gender thing is relevant. I think that whole issue is kind of past its use-by date but obviously you can use it to your advantage. Women use their femininity to their own advantage in any situation. It's just one of those things."
Is it a problem that she gets much of the attention in Fur Patrol?
"Um, no I don't think so. The boys aren't as comfortable with it, understandably, because with Fur Patrol it's my songs but it's our sound.
"All four of us are putting in all the work and making the album and doing the tours and making the music. It isn't just me but I am the front person for the band so I guess it's easier to focus on one thing as opposed to all the people."
Ok, let's close with a word association test: Rock chick.
"That's my hotmail address."
Julia Deans - Fur your eyes only
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