Fazerdaze is on a brand new path with her sophomore album Soft Power. One of Aotearoa’s most beloved indie artists, on the rise since her career beginnings in the early 2010s, she’s an artist with an immense journey of personal growth to share on this compelling new release. And the force behind the Fazerdaze name, Amelia Murray, is a real and raw person with much to say about the album’s core story of entering womanhood.
Soft Power is a record about reclaiming your power after it’s been stripped from you, reflecting a tumultuous past few years in Murray’s personal life. Relationship and identity struggles took her through a dark period that robbed her of her independence. But it’s through the music that she’s been able to find herself again. Indeed, Soft Power is a deep exploration of change and self-discovery. Murray endeavoured to find her self-worth, learning to value her seemingly opposed qualities like strength and vulnerability all at the same time. The songs tell stories with often metaphorical and dreamlike elements, like the eerie imagery of lead single ‘Bigger’, or the nostalgic farewell to youth in ‘Cherry Pie’. But beneath the visuals of these bending realities, there’s a brutally honest edge, and an explicitly feminine narrative of finding who you are through losing it.
Murray’s favourite song from the collection changes daily, but today it’s a pick between ‘So Easy’ and ‘A Thousand Years’. “It nearly didn’t make it,” Murray notes, but that’s why she’s extra thankful to have it out now. With its eclectic production and dark, moody storytelling, the lyricism is hauntingly opaque, describing the Fazerdaze musical world as both an escape from difficult memories and yet equally a trap within them. It’s a brilliant example of the pain and power on display across Soft Power.
Alongside classics like U2 and The Cure, Murray lists Tame Impala’s Lonerism as a defining influence on Soft Power, one that heavily impacted her during the university years that started the Fazerdaze project. She sought to create a record that spoke to her “past self” in that same way. A moving experience witnessing The War On Drugs’ 2018 set at Coachella, alone and enraptured in the crowd, also inspired Soft Power’s emotional intensity and raw sound. Collecting all these expressive alternative rock inspirations as her personal life melted and morphed, Murray realised the need to bring the feminine voice to these traditionally masculine genres, and stepped out on a journey to make an album that depicted self-acceptance and empowerment in women’s experiences.
Compared to the expansive alternative direction of Soft Power, Fazerdaze’s debut album Morningside, released in 2017, opted for a smaller bedroom pop sound, recorded and produced by Murray herself. “I tend to get stuck working alone”, Murray now muses on holding songs so close to the chest. But in more collaborative spaces, she finds it “harder to share that ugly side”, often shutting down her ideas before actually pitching them until time proves a serious level of trust in the room. Whilst Murray admits she’s still growing and learning to find a balance between working with others and going it alone, she’s found a safe space for the time being with the Soft Power team.
Finding that safe space is the main reason Soft Power reeled back into the Aotearoa music industry. Murray learnt an “expensive lesson” taking multiple trips to Los Angeles in search of a co-producer, trying to follow through on the original vision of a big hi-fi project. “There was a lot of pressure” to find collaborators in the American market, but the LA “hustle culture” left her feeling “so small” and uncomfortable opening up in the way the music deserved. Alongside the difficult social hierarchies in sessions, the in-and-out studio mentality raised the stakes constantly. Murray’s once cathartic process of songwriting became unnervingly fixated on the stress of thinking, “You don’t know if you’re going to get a song that day”.
Thus, Murray came back to New Zealand to work with her collaborators from the 2022 Break! EP, Simon Gooding and Emily Wheatcroft-Snape. This team not only developed the Fazerdaze sound into something slightly more gritty and heavy, but vitally created room for women’s perspectives to cut through. “I’ve become … not more careful, but more selective with who I’m working with”, Murray elaborates, as her method of creating space for the femininity she now prioritises in her work. Instead of behaving in “self-sacrificing” ways and quietening down to let others feel comfortable, she curates a team that prioritises her wellbeing and open creativity.
Coming back to something so intimate and close where everyone in the room is on the same level allowed her to listen to her intuition and write from the heart. “We’ve known each other for a long time”, she says of Gooding and Wheatcroft-Snape. “It’s not about ‘I’m bigger than you’”. Instead, the focus is on making a final product that represents the Fazerdaze message and sound, something that is simply an objectively good song.
Outside of the studio, Murray has little interest in how other opinions affect how she sees her work. She notes Voom frontman Buzz Moller as her number one person to bounce ideas off of. Not only have the two known each other for a long time, but Moller’s breadth of knowledge in songwriting provides a trusting listener for new Fazerdaze material. Otherwise, the only perspective she highly values is her own. “I don’t need outside validation”, she says of Soft Power with a smile. She’s learnt to trust that if she’s happy with the music, it’s strong enough to stand on its own, just as she now does.
Of course, getting Soft Power music out to the fans will still be the ultimate victory, and they’re sure to love it for its fiercer sound and emotional honesty. Murray can’t wait for “people to know the songs… other than (myself)!”, noting taking Soft Power to the live stage as a thrill she’s especially looking forward to. Fazerdaze joins POND on their North American tour this November, with local dates in New Zealand yet to be announced.
But most importantly for her, the album’s release is a relief in “closing the chapter” on such a tough period of her life. These thrilling eleven new tracks from Fazerdaze give more insight into the woman behind the alter ego than ever before, but they’re also ready and waiting to be made your own, simultaneously so personal and yet so relatable. With this record, Amelia Murray finds strength in embracing her full self, and Fazerdaze fans will be fizzing to find their own Soft Power too.
