Bic's French leave

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Bic Runga's French is improving. The Paris audiences for the New Zealand singer-songwriter have already heard evidence of this in her song introductions during shows in her new city of residence.

"It really means a lot to an audience for a performer to try to speak their language, no matter what sort of mess they make of it," she laughs down the phone line.

For her hometown crowd there was proof last month and now on her new album, not the official follow-up to Beautiful Collision but a live in-concert effort with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra recorded in early October.

On it and to further the French connection, she sings Jacques Brel's Ne Me Quitte Pas - known in its English translation as If You Go Away - among orchestrated versions of her songs and covers of Burt Bacharach/Dionne Warwick's Anyone Who Had A Heart and Bob Dylan's One More Cup of Coffee.

She laughs down the line from London that she probably got a "B" for School Certificate French and, as for the self-flagellating song, "I have no idea what I'm saying. Well, I sort of do. It's a pretty heady song like I know what the words mean.

"The last verse is amazing. It sort of goes 'I won't cry any more, I won't say any more, I'll just turn into a shadow and hide myself away, I'll become the shadow of your shadow, the shadow of your hand, the shadow of your dog ... "'

Would she play it in Paris? "I'd have to run it past someone who is French."

She has been using Paris as a base to try a conquest of Europe. And it would seem the right side of the Atlantic is a better fit to the sophisticated pop of her second album Beautiful Collision, which this year became the biggest-selling album by a New Zealand artist in the domestic market with 111,000 copies, topping her debut Drive's 102,000.

"I am a wee bit surprised how many records it sold in New Zealand," she says. "It's a wee bit baffling."

The shift to Europe also gives her a fresh start after a few years trying to make America take notice. "Absolutely. [Beautiful Collision] was released in America and that was that but I wasn't kidding myself about it," she says of its failure to fire Stateside.

"Just everything seems to make more sense here. In America it's trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and aesthetically I don't quite get it and the feeling is mutual - they don't quite get me either. The French and British audiences I've played to can identify what it is supposed to be."

Runga has been stacking up the glowing reviews from the British music publications from her shows and the album release. "It's amazing, the press is saying all the right things."

And in France she has been getting her face about the place. The day after this interview she was due back in Paris to appear as the sole guest on a prime-time talk show with a viewership of 1.5 million.

She says basing herself in Paris rather than London was about inspiration and occasionally being able to retreat from the industry.

"It's nice to have the challenge of a new language and it's a nice place to write songs. I can do a lot of work out of London and it's getting interesting now so it's nice to get away from it by just catching the Eurostar and getting back to Paris."

She dashed into hometown Christchurch for the concert and recording with the orchestra, making for an album that is sure to eat a large chunk of the local Christmas market. "That's Sony for you," she laughs of its timing.

The concert was a homecoming in more ways than one. Many of the orchestra's players were former school teachers and musicians Runga had learned from while growing up in the city.

As well, with the album showing Runga the singer and interpreter of others' songs, she is doing something not too far from what her mum Sophia did when she was a nightclub singer in Malaysia in the 60s. Here, she gets to be her mother's daughter.

"Hell, yeah. There's definitely a lot of my mother coming out in there, right down to the dress," she laughs about the sparkly outfit in which she is pictured on the cover.

The album will keep up Runga's local profile as she chips away at Europe. Runga is feeling hopeful that 2004 will be her year.

"I'm going to be 28 and I think if I haven't got my shit together by then there's not really any excuse. It's hard to unstick myself from living in Auckland where things are really comfortable but I've only got one or two more chances at it in terms of being on a major label.

"It's a really fast industry so I have got to pour 100 per cent into it or not do it at all. I could easily exist around Titirangi for another two years because it's kind of nice but there's more to life than cosy."

Define, as you say, getting your shit together. "Just being a bit braver and not being so apologetic because it's just a waste of time and it goes down like a lead balloon in America. People don't respect that self-deprecating schtick and that is why France is so attractive to me because the French are really super confident.

"Borderline arrogant, I guess, but they don't apologise for being themselves. So it's an amazing environment to be in because there is part of me that wants desperately to be like that, that wants to be more direct that doesn't want to [expletive] around and apologise."

* Bic Runga Live in Concert with the Christchurch Symphony is released on Monday.