Anika Moa: Pretty In Think.

Anika Moa supports Chris Isaak at Festival Hall on Saturday.

You may not yet be too familiar with the name Anika Moa, but there’s little doubt you soon will be. The 21 year old New Zealander is touring with none other than Chris Isaak on his upcoming Aussie jaunt, and her just released debut album Thinking Room is an powerful, passionate and exquisite blend of soulful songsmithery with a touch of indie pop.

“I guess I’ve always been really musical. I came from a musical family, but the time I realised I wanted to be a musician was after I left school, and I was on the dole and I’d just started making some money doing gigs. It’s really easy,” she laughs. “You sleep in, get drunk, write songs and you’re basically a professional musician.”

After making the finals of New Zealand high school music competition Smokefree Rockquest she put together a demo that eventually found it’s way into record company hands.

“Someone sent this demo to the record company. I wasn’t really interested in working with a record company at that stage. I was just thinking evil corporation money kind of thing, but I met with them and they were great people. Sometimes we clash, and sometimes we don’t, but I came together in the end. I only really wanted to do well in my own country,” she laughs. “If I do OK anywhere else it’s just an extra added bonus.”

Back in 2000, Anika packed her bags and flew to New York for the recording of Thinking Room.

“I can’t explain the way I write music. I wrote with a lot of honesty and we even covered things up a bit more, just to make is sound not so abusive. It was definitely something I wanted to do. We tried to keep every instrument we put on it so simple, keep the notes really simple. Keep it kind of hey, how you doin’?”

“We went in the studio and the producer said ‘how do you want it to sound?’ He asked me every single day and I was always like ‘I don’t know, mate’. It just kind of ended up sounding how it turned out. I think it accidentally sounded the way it should have sounded, if you know what I mean. We were just kind of blindfolded and went for it.”

While having no easily definable niche to slot into may well be the marketing manager’s nightmare, for the music fan something that defines itself by being just the little but different is a rare treat indeed. While Anika may claim her sound as accidental, the overall sound of the album is more remarkable considering some of the tracks stretch back over a five year period to when Anika was just 16.

“A notice the differences in the tracks. The first song I wrote was Flowers For You and the last one was Everything’s The Same. There’s a lot of difference in the way I was using the melodies, but there’s a lot of difference in the words. Things are more sad or more happy. I don’t think people will notice as much as me. It’s really difficult to explain your musical sound. I just honestly don’t have a clue. I don’t know how to brand myself.”

For the recording of Thinking Room, Moa enlisted the musical talents of an eclectic ensemble who’s previous recording talents collectively included The The, Fiona Apple, Eagle Eye Cherry, The Triffids, Echo & The Bunnymen and The Corrs.

“What we did was figure out what we wanted done, and we just got the guys in and they just totally put it down. It was so easy. Matt (Chamberlain) came in and we recorded all the drums in seven days. We did all the bass parts in a couple of days. We had people come in and play cello and do some keyboard parts and it was all so simple.”

“The main guy I worked with, Adam Peters, is a keyboard player, so we would look at the sounds we wanted and the sound we didn’t want. He’s pretty amazing really.”

None of the album’s hired guns are members of the band that Anika takes on the road with her, instead using fellow New Zealand musicians she had known for some time.

“It’s a band I put together after I got back from New York after the recording. They were just my friends, basically, from New Zealand that we all chill out with, and sometimes play tunes together. I’ve been playing with them at home for about a year.”