A time of Anxiety for Ladyhawke
Performing can be really difficult for me ... I still feel intensely uncomfortable. The difference is, I’m accustomed to that anxiety
PIP BROWN, aka Ladyhawke, didn’t know terror until she stepped on stage. “I’ve never been comfortable being the centre of attention,” she says. “I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it. At all. Knowing everyone is staring at you can be hard. Sometimes, when I’m performing, I close my eyes. I pretend I’m alone.”
As pop stars go, Brown is sweet and self-deprecating but the 32-year-old has diva moments. She has thrown strops at photo-shoots and pouted through a concert. She refuses to discuss her Asperger’s, a mild form of autism.
The New Zealander isn’t leaving anything to chance. Before the interview, a missive from her record label says: “Pip’s Asperger’s should not be mentioned or asked about”. As someone who finds it difficult to relate to other people, is it a struggle to inhabit the role of pop star? I ask. “I enjoy touring,’ she says, unperturbed. “The thing is, performing can be really difficult for me. It’s not that it has gotten any easier either. I still feel intensely uncomfortable. The difference is, I am now accustomed to that sense of anxiety. It’s part of what going on the road is about. Sometimes, a show will be fine. Occasionally, I will try to talk between songs and hit my head on a microphone. That still happens.”
Ladyhawke burst onto the pop scene in 2008. A sassy updating of Stevie Nicks, Kate Bush and Kim Wilde, success was instant. The music press built her up. Fashion mags fawned over her individualistic dress style, a mash-up of grunge and Bowie-era androgynous. The limelight seemed assured.
Then, she disappeared. After a few years, people forgot about her. Where was she? “I went back to New Zealand,” she says. “I finished touring in Feb 2010. I was so tired. I couldn’t do anything. I was supposed to have started my new album. Instead, I would lie on the couch. It was a real bummer. I got two songs out of those sessions.”
She went cold turkey on music and ceased to have anything to do with Ladyhawke.
Her record company must have been concerned? “They were worried for me more than anything,” she says. “They could see I was exhausted. I had lost a lot of weight. Touring is gruelling. It’s taxing on the body. Everyone could see I needed to be in one place for a while. Every so often, I’d hear the question — ‘how is the new album coming along?’ Mostly, they were more concerned about my health. Which is pretty awesome.”
Brown’s desire to write songs returned eventually. “When I started going to record stores again, I knew the hunger had renewed itself,” she says. “Before you knew it, I was attending to gigs too. I was back in business. I wanted to see Ladyhawke all the way through.”
Brown flew back to London, and worked with producer Pascal Gabriel (Dido, Kylie Minogue, Natalie Imbruglia). With her new album (the appropriately titled Anxiety) just out, she is nervous as to what sort of reception awaits.
“I was aware people had thought I’d fallen off the face of the earth. It’s in my personality that I never want to rush anything. I genuinely wanted to do a second record. At the same time, I wanted to take as long as I needed. Rather than writing a crappy song and thinking, ‘well, this will do.’ I was never going to take that approach,” she says.
Working with a perfectionist such as Gabriel brought out the best in her, she says. “We are the opposite in a lot of ways,” she says. “He is very organised and willing to see an idea through to the end. Whereas, I’ll play a riff and if I don’t like it straight away, I have to bin it. I think we complemented one another, though I’m sure there were some ideas which he thought could be brought to fruition that were left on the cutting-room floor. Over all, it was a relationship that functioned very well.”
Brown’s just back from a pre-release tour of the UK. The gigs were ecstatically received. This was an enormous relief.
“I thought people might not care or that my new stuff might be shit. So it was good to go out there and play. It was a huge boost to my confidence. Although I do find live performance difficult on occasion, all the positive energy coming at you is hugely encouraging. It is something you look forward to,” she says.
As she returns to the spotlight, one thing she isn’t looking forward to is having her sartorial choices scrutinised. While Brown has a strong idea of how she wants to present herself, she frets about being portrayed as a clothes-horse who happens to sing.
“When I first came along, my image didn’t quite add up,” she says. “I’ve always dressed grungily. And yet my music is very poppy. There’s a contrast that seems to cause some confusion. Before people went along to see me play, I suspect they had made up their mind about what they thought of me. When I wasn’t what they expected, it jarred.”
There were unhappy run-ins with London fashionistas, she says. “I did lots of fashion shoots. On quite a few occasions, I would give stylists a brief: ‘Pip won’t wear anything feminine — no dresses, heels or earrings — just androgynous clothes.’ Stuff like that.
“Then, you’d get there and they’d expect you to, like, put on a dress or what not. Fortunately, I’m pretty assertive about what I wear. I don’t like people tampering. Most of the time, I got to style myself.”
* Anxiety is out now
