Fazerdaze

Fazerdaze – Soft Power

When Fazerdaze released her long-awaited comeback EP ‘Break!’ in 2022, it signified not only a literal new phase in Amelia Murray’s career but also a visceral, powerful burst into a new period of personal freedom. Having pushed through and overcome the obstacles that had been holding the New Zealand singer back since her acclaimed 2017 debut album ‘Morningside’ – a dysfunctional relationship; a period of physical burnout; years of navigating industry webs and egos – ‘Break!’ signified the moment when Amelia found the strength to free herself.

Though the ‘Break!’ EP arrived a full half-decade after ‘Morningside’ – a debut release that received rave reviews across the board, with lead single ‘Lucky Girl’ now streamed nearly 20 million times – Amelia had been quietly working towards its full-length follow up almost the entire time. Where ‘Morningside’ was bedroom pop-based and intimate, its author knew that she wanted her next to feel bigger, more expansive and painted in a broader palette.

Amelia references the likes of Tame Impala, The Cure and U2’s ‘The Joshua Tree’ as examples of the ambitious scope she was aiming for. “I wanted it to sound massive. I was dreaming of this record having a very feminine take on those rock records,” she says. “So many men have taken up that sonic space and I wanted this to sit in that same pocket but have much more of a woman’s lens, lyrically and sonically.”

Welcome, then, to ‘Soft Power’. A second record rooted in fierce self-compassion and strength. As much as the ‘Break!’ EP sought to cut the old cords, it’s another case of Fazerdaze getting the title right on the money. More than just a quotable phrase, ‘Soft Power’ is a trait that the musician has come to embody over the last five years; a lesson learnt from making the album that’s then come to define the work itself. “It’s such a manifesto of a title. It resonates with the woman I’m allowing myself to become,” Amelia says. “This record was a space for me to learn how to embrace my fierceness, strength and power while at the same time realising I don’t need to lose my softness, rawness and vulnerability. I realised many qualities can co-exist within me, these qualities are not binary or mutually exclusive of each other.”

Having initially sought a co-producer, heading out to LA three times and spending the majority of her own record advance trying people out, it was the liberating process of recording and releasing the ‘Break!’ EP that urged Amelia to return to her usual process of working alone. “What I was looking for in everyone else was what I needed to re-find in myself,” she nods. “I put the second album on such a pedestal for so long, and it was only through rediscovering my original process during ‘Break!’ that I found the key to finishing this record.”

And so, fully reaching for the expansive sound that had lived in her head since the first seeds of the album had been sown, she set about creating a second record that blew her own horizons out into vast and dazzling new sonic waters. Channelling the sizzling, atmospheric feeling of sunset festival sets, these are songs designed to take up space – cinematic earworms built for singing loud and losing yourself inside.

“My friend called it a ‘bedroom stadium record’,” Amelia laughs. “My previous records suit these smaller rooms and tighter spaces, but when more and more people started hearing my music and I got a taste of playing bigger stages I was like, ‘Damn… I want to take up all the space’.”

The vast majority of ‘Soft Power’ was recorded and produced by Amelia herself, with help from co-mixer Simon Gooding and engineer Emily Wheatcroft-Snape, who assisted on recording the album’s drum parts. In a real case of divine intervention, however, the briefest of stints on Bumble led to the musician meeting a sound engineer, who then loaned her the gear that would enable her to finish the record. “I turned Bumble on for half a day and he was the only guy I talked to,” she laughs. “He lent me some gear, set it up for me, and left me to it. I suddenly had all the tools and equipment I needed to work, without ego or hidden contracts attached to it.”

The results speak for themselves. From the luscious opening chords of its title track, ‘Soft Power’ feels like closing your eyes and taking a really deep breath. There’s a lightness and tenderness throughout, but there’s also resolution and strength. Musically, it fuses synths and electronic beats with old school rock instruments – guitars, bass, drums – to craft a world that thrums with human, organic grit but is capable of spinning off into flights of hooky pop fantasy. Take previously released first single ‘Bigger’, where the romantic yearning of its lyrics are mirrored by a fizzing synth line, like the sparkling sound of hope itself.

Written during a season of self discovery, ‘Soft Power’ stitches together snapshots from Amelia’s journey into a portrait of a woman becoming herself. ‘Cherry Pie’ was written during the musician’s first ever trip to LA, in her early twenties. “I was homesick and had this existential crisis of realising I was becoming an adult and youth was never going to happen again,” she recalls. “That song captures the anxiety of letting go and walking into the unknown of adulthood.” The “sludgy, distorted, fat bassline and drum beat” of ‘So Easy’, meanwhile, houses lyrics about Amelia’s relationship to her craft as a whole. “Everyone thinks it’s about an affair, but I wrote it about my love for music; finding my flow and ease with it but also with an underlying guilt that I should get a ‘proper’ job.”

‘Purple_02’ and ‘A Thousand Years’ mark the most recent chapters of ‘Soft Power’, and both ring with a rawness, fragility and rage that Amelia felt she wasn’t able to express previously. “I start to lose me within myself,” goes the former, while the latter speaks of feeling herself stagnate and erode for the sake of keeping a peaceful relationship: “As long as I stay still, it’s almost, nearly bearable.”

They’re some of ‘Soft Power’’s darker moments, but within that darkness comes an unburdening; an integral part of healing. And for Fazerdaze, ‘Soft Power’ has been a record full of these moments: an album that can only sound as light and strong and brilliant as it is because of the layers of skin she’s shed along the way. “This record taught me to breathe into my full, expansive self. I’m no longer making myself small to make others feel big. I’m taking up all the space now and I’m not apologising for it.”