Gareth Thomas: Loving the alien

'As you get older you sort of relax into an alt country band' - Gareth Thomas. Photo / Supplied

Gareth Thomas felt a bit like he was dating ET when he met a girl from the other side of the world, and that's what inspired many of the songs on his first solo album Lady Alien.

The voice on the album is almost unrecognisable as that of a former member of the quirky Kiwi pop-rock group Goodshirt, most famous for radio hits Sophie and Fiji Baby.

The band has been "having a little sleep", as Thomas, the group's keyboardist puts it, since lead singer Rodney Fisher moved to London in 2005.

Thomas followed him over soon after, and between chasing his girl, looking for jobs on the internet and Googling himself, started writing his own music.

Inspired by bands he had toured with while in Goodshirt, like Wilco and the Flaming Lips, Thomas says he found himself going down a much more relaxed, "less shouty" path than he had known in New Zealand.

Thomas' net surfing inspired his first single, Google Song, which is about all the other Gareth Thomases Google brought up when he punched his name into the search engine - "a broker, or a baker, or a booker or some barrister too".

The kooky, rhythmic lyrics of the song are reminiscent of the likes of the Moldy Peaches' folk song, Anyone Else But You, but elsewhere his tracks plunge through mythical, meandering synths.

It's a varied album and Thomas does his best to label it with the description alt-rock-country-slash-psychedelic-pop - which is a rather large mouthful for something so stripped-back that much of it was recorded live in one take.

That was an idea inspired by John Lennon, who Thomas once read had recorded his vocals in one hit.

"I wanted to do something really organic that involved recording in live takes the whole way, to keep it raw. A lot of the songs are recorded all in one hit, vocals, drums, bass and everything."

After rounding up a few trusty New Zealand musicians - ex-Goodshirt band-mate Murray Fisher, his brother Matt Thomas of the Feelers and Goldenhorse's Ben King - he set out to record most of the album at a warehouse in Ellerslie, where both he and his brother have been living.

Matt Thomas has what Gareth describes as a mild obsession with microphones, so they found they had everything they needed for a home studio.

While it was a slightly stilted process in that they had to stop recording whenever the dance school next door held its classes, the experience inspired one of the songs on the album.

The subject of Tania, was one of the noisy cheerleaders from the dance school. Thomas says he was amused by the way her young comrades said her name.

It's possibly a match for Goodshirt's Sophie, a catchy song about the girl of his affections that Thomas penned at high school, only minus the crush.

"There's always a bit of pressure to write another song like [Sophie], but I'm really happy with songs on the album," he says. But rather than another radio hit, Thomas aimed for timeless lyrics and melodies. He performs them with an unusual pairing of synthesisers and acoustic guitars.

"The two don't usually mash together, but that's what I do on the album," he says.

Despite the fact it was written during a penniless period in bitterly cold London, and deals with loss, heartbreak and confusion, Lady Alien is strikingly easy-going and summery. Thomas says this is reflective of where he is in life.

"It just feels a bit more grown-up. As you get older you sort of relax into an alt country band, it seems," he says.

LOWDOWN

Who: Gareth Thomas
What: Former member of Goodshirt goes solo.
Latest: Lady Alien, out now.
Live: Kings Arms, November 25

-TimeOut