Fazerdaze: Soft Power (digital outlets)

One of the most deceptively clever and memorable local pop songs of recent years was the Lucky Girl single by Amelia Murray (aka Fazerdaze). It had a gleaming and upbeat sound but a close listen revealed layers of uncertainty within it.

It was on her excellent 2017 debut album Morningside where the classy, mostly upbeat guitar-driven pop belied a downward arc of insecurity in a relationship.

Murray seemed one of the brightest lights in our pop landscape . . . but, as Morningside showed, surfaces can be deceptive.

Her 2022 EP Break! (“something gotta break, something's gotta give”) came in the aftermath of touring, burnout and emotional distress: “Did you think all this wouldn't have taken its toll . . . as I whisper all my secrets through a microphone” on Overthink It.

Now living in Ōtautahi Christchurch, she has regrouped after a time searching for a producer here and in the US for her second album Soft Power which is the culmination of self-discovery and personal empowerment, extending the sonics of Break! through electronic beats and cinematic-scale synths to swell her crafted, economic pop-rock.

So Easy with its woozy bass invites phone-waving from swaying festival crowds after dark, Bigger has a constrained Velvet Underground/Nico throb overlaid by smears of synths and Cherry Pie harks back the early electro-pop spirit of OMD and the Cure.

She teases with the entrancingly European-sounding, delightfully breezy Dancing Years and the fragile, subdued whisper of A Thousand Years with, “I watch the world go by . . . I've fallen through the cracks”.

The brief intimacy of Sleeper and the shimmering City Glitter close the self-contained album in radiant colours.

As before, Fazerdaze's production places her melodic vocals in an echoed middle-ground, allowing private thoughts to remain slightly distant.

“I'm no longer making myself small to make others feel big,” she has said. “I'm taking up all the space now and I'm not apologising for it.”

Such self-confidence confirms Soft Power is a promising new beginning.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here.