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MUSIC FEATURE

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contrast of form and content when you’re creating art? Great question. Form and content do upswell in the writing and recording process, but often it’s just a happy accident. The act of creating can be deliberate – like writing a line you think hits the spot – but then another idea emerges, either voices or instruments or in the mixing process. And then you have a eureka moment: the alchemy of recording spontaneously. That choir, and in fact all the record’s backing vocals, also raise the concept of ’sonder’ – that everyone around us is living a life as complex as our own, with their own thoughts and stories and problems.When you’re singing about big issues that can easily lose their human face amongst the discourse, how do you keep the individual human impact at the forefront of listeners’ minds? I love that idea, and it’s true. Especially in my case, as I’m not a navel-gazing, sensitive flower child – rather an activist by temperament, who wants to change things quickly. I have to work hard to balance the polemical with the personal, but I do bleed and I try to tap into my feelings with these songs. Having two of my daughters - May and Grace - come in and sing straight onto the tracks really added. We just sat around with an acoustic guitar running them through but not aiming for the diva thing, and that was fundamental to the sound and spirit Tony Buchen (who produced TTN ) and I were after. Being family brings some humanness to the sound. After all that try and suggest an image or statement for people to chew on, and then hope for the best. The album finishes with the line ”The undertaker has started to dance.” Even though he might be doing that, why do you believe it’s still ”not too late”? Because I have faith in people younger than me...

The True North by Peter Garrett is out March 15 via Sony.

I’m not a navel gazing, sensitive flower child – rather

an activist by temperament

PETER, PETER, ARTFORM EATER Across a multi-faceted career which has touched almost every corner of the arts and activism, Peter Garrett has established himself as one of our most passionate national icons. But his talent isn’t set in amber; with his second ever solo album, there’s a commitment to fluidity on show.We put some questions to the legend about the briliant TheTrue North. Words Zoë Radas

then respond to what I’d written and what the players had provided as a soundscape. It’s probably easier when it’s your own songs, and somehow all those pub gigs back in the day have given me some vocal breadth. So there’s a bit of space to land a note or two. In Innocence Part 1 , the backing vocals sound like a gorgeous Greek chorus – and then you sing, ”We’re not in a movie, this isn’t a chorus line.” It’s a very cool, confronting moment between lyrics and music. How often do you think about the

You have pushed your voice on this album! On TheTrue North it cracks, on Hey Archetype you give these hoots of derision, and in Human Playground it crinkles out into vapour. For a musician with such a distinctive singing voice, what’s your approach to singing techniques at this stage of your career? I’m just trying to let the voice be an instrument with words, not really thinking about the technical aspects of singing – I’d be the last person on earth to go there! I just wanted to find the heart of each song, and

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By 1994, Chris Cornell’s talent was a beast well known outside of the man’s grunge-mad hometown of Seattle; his band Soundgarden had already received three Grammy noms from their creative alt-metal output. But with fourth studio album Superunknown , the four-piece’s vision for grunge’s future made a star-sized stamp on the MTV generation and far beyond. Released this month three decades ago, Superunknown contained hits Spoonman, Fell on Black Days, The Day I Tried to Live, and, of course, enduring belter Black Hole Sun . Cornell wrote the latter in his head during a drive, and whistled it into a Dictaphone as soon as he got home. It won Soundgarden their first Grammy, for ’Best Hard Rock Performance’ (1994).

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A still from the infamous Black Hole Sun clip (1994)

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