As per Music 101 tradition, leading up to the APRA Silver Scroll awards, we are interviewing the songwriters and producers in detail about their nominated song - picking apart and dissecting the songs.
In this installment, Music101 talks to Tiny Ruins about her song 'The Crab/Waterbaby.'
Tāmaki Makaurau band Tiny Ruins has been a staple of our indie-folk scene since their first EP dropped in 2010.
Singer-songwriter Hollie Fullbrook discusses how 'The Crab / Waterbaby' from their fourth album Ceremony helped her process real-life trauma.
"It sort of depicts me, the narrator of the song, walking around my local harbour the Manukau and coming across this crab that has found itself on its back and the tide has gone out so it's actually stuck there and it's flailing around.
"You know, sometimes these little incidents in life really stick with you.
"Sometimes you just get a feeling that something is significant, it's really a bit movie-like. ... Everything seems somehow more poetic and higher contrast to the rest of life, brighter colours or something.
"If I ever get that feeling I try and become aware of it and write it down because I think that is the stuff that songs are made of and that can escape you so quickly if you don't note it down."
Hollie Fullbrook. Photo: supplied
The songs in Ceremony came together during the pandemic and also helped Fullbrook deal with a tragedy in her own life.
"I went through a time where I went through a really terrible personal loss, where I lost a baby halfway through a pregnancy.
"Following that, I wrote quite a lot of the material that ended up on the album.
"Two or three years later I was able to see how it made me understand life better and people better and I was able to kind of understand my environment better and nature better, I think."
The crab memory became a potent metaphor in her songwriting.
"The crab was like a way of seeing this other being, this other.
"I think grief sort of strips you of this layer of defence that often we're walking around with and it kind of takes you to this present transparence.
"You're able to just talk very openly and honestly because when you're in a sort of deep grief, you can't think about anything else, so you just have to speak about it.
"That's really like the crux of the lesson that the crab is giving us. 'I'm here, I'm on my back, help!'"
