Louisa Nicklin and Shayne Carter Photo: Zoë Dunster / Ebony Lamb
“Louisa's voice is really unique and she's got a great haunting quality to her vocals.”
On Auckland musician Louisa Nicklin’s beautiful new album The Big Sulk, Kiwi music icon Shayne Carter lent a hand as “song doctor”.
The pair talk to Charlotte Ryan about their creative friendship, the upsides of getting older and hanging out in the Coromandel bush.
Nicklin first met Carter after he heard her song ‘Pour It Down’ while on the Silver Scrolls judging panel and dropped her a line to offer encouragement.
“[The song] was soulful and there was nothing generic about it. I also really liked her voice... I just thought it was a great tune and I really liked the vibe that I got off it.”
Later, Nicklin went on to tour with Carter’s band Dimmer. In mid-2022 she invited him to produce the follow-up to her self-titled 2021 debut album.
‘I really liked how Shayne talked about music and thought about music and thought it'd be really cool to like work together.’
Drawn to the “romanticism” of leaving town to make an album, Nicklin chose a house in the Coromandel bush to record The Big Sulk.
“Going to the Coromandel meant that everyone could come and be able to pop back to Auckland if they really needed to. There was a nice vibe and lots of sausages... yeah, we ate way too many sausages.”
New Zealand rock musician Shayne Carter working on the 2024 album The Big Sulk - a collaboration with classical composer Louisa Nicklin. Photo: Supplied
Recording in a natural environment allowed the songs on The Big Sulk to “have some patience in them”, Nicklin says, and also infused its sound.
“People have told me that in the drum tracks, you can hear cicadas because we tracked the drums with all the windows and doors open… We were all sitting out on the deck in the sun with our headphones on listening to Mason [Fairey] track drums. It was quite scenic and beautiful.”
“Change on the horizon” is the theme of The Big Sulk if there is one, Nicklin says, but the album’s unintended mood of discontent is what led Carter to - at first jokingly - suggest the title.
Songwriting is a space where the classically trained musician and composer can be vulnerable and also speak her mind.
“[In songs] I feel like I can say things that maybe I wouldn't say in person. Instead, I just say it really publicly to lots of people.”
These days, she guesses with advancing age, Nicklin finds herself caring less about the judgments of others.
That’s the relief of getting older, confirms Carter, who now “gives weight” to the critical opinions of peers and people he respects but not the general public.
“If [the work] is any good you eventually realise. You don't need anyone else to tell you.”
Right now the Dunedin-born songwriter is feeling “really buzzed out” about his upcoming album of back-catalogue and new songs recorded with the NZSO.
“It’s just amazing hearing your stupid riffs being played by the New Zealand Symphony. It’s like ‘Wow, that's my stupid riff!'’
Although Carter says he’s neither a sound engineer or “a technical dude”, The Big Sulk is his second turn as a producer after working on Kiwi rock band Die! Die! Die!’s 2007 album Promises, Promises.
“What I thought I could bring to Louisa and to the Die! Die! Die! record was basically being a bit of a song doctor or a song tweaker. That's my skill. And putting together a song is way easier when it's not your song.”
On The Big Sulk he plays a bit of guitar but mostly his job was working with Nicklin on her songs and singing.
“She's got this particular register which she sings in, which is great, which is her thing. There's bits where we stretch what she was doing vocally a wee bit more.”
As a producer, Carter says he was careful not to obscure her unique sound.
“I like the fact that Louisa's music is quite often a bit kooky. It's not square, you know. It's got odd bits, it's got odd signatures and all that kind of stuff. It's inventive around the edges.”
Louisa Nicklin tour dates:
6 Sept, Nelson, Boathouse
7 Sept, Christchurch, Space Academy
8 Sept, Dunedin, Yours
13 Sept, Wellington, Moon
20 Sept, Auckland, Double Whammy
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