It was a particularly serendipitous convergence of inspiration that led to French for Rabbits’ Chamber Music New Zealand tour, frontwoman Brooke Singer says.
On the one side, then Chamber Music NZ chief executive Gretchen Le Roche thinking French for Rabbits’ grown-up dreampop would make a nice addition to their calendar.
And on the other, Singer and co, who had been thinking strings, definitely more strings.
It was the forward-thinking Le Roche who first made the approach.
"But then, I was already on this wavelength anyway, so I was like, ‘this is perfect timing’," Singer says.
The upshot is, well-travelled and 2022 Taite Music Prize-nominated New Zealand band French for Rabbits — on this occasion presenting as a four-piece — will play Dunedin’s Glenroy Auditorium next Saturday accompanied by the violins, viola and cello of Auckland’s The Black Quartet. That’s eight musicians all up.
The four-stop tour, that finishes in Dunedin, doubles as a release for French for Rabbits’ new EP, In the End I Won’t Be Coming Home.
"We have wanted to do a tour with strings forever," Singer says. "And we’ve dabbled a little bit. In America we played with a violinist, a harp player, and then in September last year we toured with our friend Ruby Solly, who is a taonga puoro player and cellist."
From there they’ve been working to expand the space within which the band works, augmenting and elaborating.
"I had two songs from the EP, which, as I was writing them, it was in my mind that there would be string parts. I was always leaving space for those to be developed. Then we worked with string arrangers ahead of actually putting in the band parts. So, I started them with vocals and piano or vocals and guitar, but then we put in the strings and after they were in, then we put in the band parts."
When done the other way around, as is convention, there’s not always as much room left for string arrangements to occupy, making it more difficult for them to manifest as an integral character, she says.
The EP’s title track, In the End I Won’t Be Coming Home, is a case in point, the songwriter says, a song in which she wanted the strings to play a really strong evocative role.
"I find that song quite hard to explain yet. I think it is still coming to fruition."
However, it is closely tied to place, a not unusual connection for the band’s music, she says.
The place in question is Baring Head, the windswept headland on Raukawa Moana, Cook Strait, about an hour from Wellington.
The song was written in a rundown building that is slowly being restored below the headland lighthouse, Singer says.
"There is a winding road from there back to Wellington, which is quite a desolate landscape as you come back through. I think that image is in my mind a little bit."
Baring Heads gets its own song on the EP too, in which the strings again are called upon to embody nature’s forces.
"I guess it is the elements. Baring Heads is a really windy place, so it is playing the role of the wind and the ocean."
What they are doing is chamber music, Singer says, so it is cool to be able to present it in venues such as the Glenroy.
"I would call this new album chamber folk, I guess. So to be able to play it in these kinds of spaces I think is important."
The band has long been on an expansionary trajectory with its sound, Singer notes.
"We tend to add members over time. We started as a duo, then a four-piece, then we added Penelope Esplin — who is from Dunedin actually — then we were a five-piece."
Alongside that process, Singer says she has been digging deeper into complexity in terms of song structures and lyrical ideas, and also in terms of her playing.
"I felt like I wanted to push myself to play in a different way on the piano."
Next Saturday’s concert will feature 12 songs with The Black Quartet, songs from the new EP as well as some from the back catalogue.
The band worked on the music with Black Quartet arrangers Elliot Vaughan and Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper, as well as with Mikal Cronin, of the Ty Segall Band.
Singer says the songs chosen from the back catalogue either already had string parts in them, or lent themselves to being reimagined with strings.
"There is one called Feathers and Dreams, for which we got Mikal Cronin, who plays in this psychedelic garage band from the USA, and I just had this feeling that he would get what I wanted to do with that song — so, he’s sort of reimagined these string parts, which changes the song, makes it really new for us."
