Ladyhawke: Night flights home

Phillipa 'Pip' Brown - aka Ladyhawke - is always dreaming of home.
And the 31-year-old international and national award-winning singer/songwriter links her personality and her chart-busting continent-conquering music to her childhood and adolescent days spent in her hometown, Masterton.
Brown says she is ready for her first New Zealand performances in a year - although not without some reluctance and anxiety.
She will headline the Laneway Festival in Auckland on Monday and in Wellington on Tuesday.
Brown is also soaring through her - some would say critical - second album, which according to her label is set for New Zealand release in September.
It's been a little over two years since the release of her debut self-titled album, which fired the international hit singles Paris Is Burning and My Delirium.
Both tracks have in that time featured in everything from Chanel runway and fashion campaigns to break-out TV shows and viral video game soundtracks.
Formerly a Chanel College student, Masterton main street busker and transtasman band member, Brown as a solo artist has been tracking galaxies over the past two years well beyond any other Wairarapa musicians who have come before her.
Occasionally, the stress shows.
This interview was an Anniversary Weekend ambush, conducted over five minutes on a wet afternoon in her beloved hometown.
The now London-based musician had just finished a few frames of 10-pin bowling and a boutique burger meal shared with her jazz drummer stepfather Frank Bain, singer-guitarist mother Jillian Brown, two other family members to round out the lane, and her Auckland-based actress and musician friend, Madeleine Sami.
Brown remained composed throughout the rapid-fire media quiz. She was genuine, humble and honest but the lady had a cold, so declined a picture with an apology.
Her mother Jillian, who returned with Bain to Masterton a month ago after years living in the capital, said her daughter flies back to her small Provence hideaway at the end of next month to carry on with her upcoming album beside close friend and renowned producer, Pascal Gabriel (who has worked with the likes of New Order and Kylie Minogue).
"She was only here for the weekend and I'm not sure when she'll get the time to come home again. But she will. She just can't stay away. It really is important to her.
"I reckon it's the roast meals. And now the bowling alley burgers - we went back the very next day because she loved the food so much. So yeah, she will be back."
TA: Were any of the tracks on your upcoming album written in Masterton?
Ladyhawke: "No, I didn't write any in Masterton. I did write three in Auckland and the rest happened in the south of France.
TA: With Pascal (Gabriel)? Is he your muse or does he just get you?
Ladyhawke: "He's a good friend, a real friend to me. An amazing inspiration as a person and he's so talented. He had faith in me and saw something in me really early on, before anyone else.
"He knows me really well, so he's really good at knowing exactly what I want and when I say something.
"That's why it's kind of hard to write with anybody else now.
"If I play something, have an idea, or vice versa, or I verbalise it or I play something, I'll be like 'ohhh that should sound like, crunchy'.
"He knows exactly what I mean a lot better than anybody else."
TA: How long have you known him and did you click straight away?
Ladyhawke: "I've known him for three years and yeah, we clicked straight away. The minute he met me he sort of got my personality straight away - the real me."
TA: Is it true you used to busk with a full (drum) kit in Queen St?
Ladyhawke: "Yeah, I busked with a full kit just outside what used to be Paper Plus (the former Post Office building)."
TA: Did you get any sideways glances?
Ladyhawke: "It was me and my sister and my stepsister and yeah, I think we annoyed everyone."
TA: Were you ever asked to move along?
Ladyhawke: "Ah, no.
"People were kinda nice. People were really good and we were only playing Christmas songs. I think we only knew four or five songs. So we just kept playing them over and over."
TA: Were you writing your own songs back then?
Ladyhawke: "I started writing songs when I was about 15 and they were just - you know - typical teenagers' songs. Just trying to sound like Hendrix or the Beatles or all the things of that time.
"We were just tinkering around and writing songs and I didn't start writing seriously until I was in Two Lane Black Top."
TA: Has Wairarapa inspired anything on the upcoming album?
Ladyhawke: "It's not like the music itself. It's like ... I dream, I have repetitive dreams about Masterton. At least four or five times a week.
"It's always Opaki Rd because I used to like biking down it really fast and my dreams, everything about my dreams is always based in Masterton. Like I never left."
TA: So whether it's the south of France, London or New York, you always dream of home?
Ladyhawke: "Yeah definitely, I'm a bit of a homebody and my dreams are always of Masterton, for some reason."
TA: Does that make you who you are - what your music is?
"To me it's nostalgic, even the new stuff I'm writing - which is completely different to the old stuff.
"Quite nostalgic and it's sort of dreamy and sort of like a dream because I'm always a little mystified.
"My years in Masterton were golden, the weather here was so good - hot summers - and I have such fond memories of growing up as a child.
TA: So does that mindset show in your lyrics or melodies?
Ladyhawke: "I think having that warm nostalgia, I'm always sort of - I guess it's never really wanting to grow up. I think that really is most of my music - because of the naive but fun years I had as a kid growing up in Masterton.
"I think if I'd grown up in the city I'd be a completely different person, you know. I love coming back here.
"I mean, it's me as a person. I'm a smalltown girl and I always will be. I just happen to be a nomad."
TA: The Laneway will be your first performance on home soil for a while, are you ready?
Ladyhawke: "I'm a bit nervous because I didn't know that the Wellington show was a side-show not the actual big festival.
"I think there's less bands and I'm nervous because I wish I wasn't the headliner.
"I feel less pressure when I'm just one of many doing the same thing.
"But when I'm one of few and I'm the headliner - I freak out.
"You know, like I'm worried my set's not long enough or I'm not really that prepared because I haven't played for a year - I had a year off."
TA: But you've got the goods and that's that, right?
Ladyhawke: "Yeah, I've got about 45 minutes of the goods [laughs].
"It's not a headline set, it's just a short set. So I think I'm ready now.
"I feel I'm ready."
TA: Did you ever expect to reach the heights you have and where to from here?
Ladyhawke: "I never thought I'd get any further than where I was at the time. I was just doing what I was doing.
"I like that I never had any preconceptions of what I was going to be.
"I just always wanted to do whatever I was doing at that particular moment.
"And I think my naive view - from growing up in Masterton - really helped me.
"Because everything that has happened has been a surprise to me, and still will be - no matter what happens next, whether I plummet or go even higher."
Ladyhawke won six New Zealand Music Awards in 2009 including Album of the Year and Single of the Year.
She also that year won the ARIA Music Awards for Breakthrough Artist - Album and Breakthrough Artist - Single,  and won a nomination in the NME Awards for Best Solo Artist.
She last year won MTV Australia Awards nominations in the Best Kiwi and Independent Spirit categories and was nominated at the 2010 Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist.