Birds is an often-overlooked item in the Bic Runga discography. Photo: Bic Runga - Birds
Opinion - Bic Runga's Birds might not be what most people think of when they hear the term 'psychedelia', but it is certainly an album with a distinct sound and mood - distinct even amongst Runga's rich and varied catalogue. And if it was her goal - as she hinted in a RNZ interview from 2012 - to make music that would alter the listener's mind in some way, to make them forget themselves, at least for the length of an album, she achieved it with this record more than any other she has made.
And yet Birds remains an often-overlooked item in the Bic Runga discography. When I emailed Runga to let her know I was planning a programme on this album she replied that while she was bored with talking about herself, she really appreciated anyone thinking of what she referred to as "the long-forgotten Birds record".
Released in 2005, Birds was Runga's third album and came on the heels of two blockbusters: Her debut, Drive, with its haunting title track and hit song 'Sway', followed by the even bigger Beautiful Collision, which featured the singles 'Get Some Sleep' and 'Something Good', which stayed on the charts for nearly two years including seven weeks at number one, and made Runga the country's biggest-selling solo artist.
But Birds was a very different proposition from those albums. It didn't deliver a package of readymade hits, though it is abundant in melody, and hardly short of hooks. But in many ways it's a more complete record than its predecessors - conceived and executed as a single entity, rather than an entity comprised of singles.
And yet there's a sombre undertone that's impossible to ignore. It's built into the songs. What might have contributed to this mood?
Bic Runga, photographed in 2023. Photo: Tom Grut
Runga discussed some of these things at the time, and her reluctance to revisit them now is understandable. In 2006, she told the Guardian's Caroline Sullivan that the album had been made in the wake of her father's death, and she seems to allude to this in the album's imagery, all the way through to the title. In traditional Māori thought, certain birds are associated with aspects of death and grieving.
But the songs also seem to refer to another kind of death: the death of a relationship. It's a favourite theme of the torch ballad, and though it can be hard to tell exactly who or what is being mourned, the sense of loss in these songs is palpable.
With their darker themes and brooding tunes, these new songs demanded both a different instrumentation and a different production style.
She set about putting together a bespoke band that included Neil Finn on piano, and a trio of backing singers all more accustomed to running their own shows: Anika Moa, Anna Coddington and Shayne Carter. The record would be made with the musicians playing together, all in the same room, the same way those big sad ballads used to be recorded in the 1960s. To top it off, she had Christchurch-based Tom Rainey write string arrangements with more than a touch of Burt Bacharach about them.
Birds was released in late 2005 and immediately became the country's number one album. The following year it won the New Zealand Music Award for Album of the Year. It has sold triple platinum - which hardly makes it a failure in anyone's terms. And yet when people think of the iconic Runga songs, Birds is seldom the place they start.
But to me it's her most immersive album. Rather than a forgotten record, it's record where, at least for the slightly more than half hour that it lasts, you can forget yourself.
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