Ladyhawke Talks Bests

Photo: Cybele Malinowski

We’ve waited four years for Pip Brown’s new album and just when we were about to get rowdy, it’s arrived. To celebrate we sat Brown down to talk bests…

Best Decision
There are a few real integral ones. I think the best decision of late was to stop drinking. End of July it will be two years. It just gave me massive focus. I drank because of my anxiety and I also just loved drinking, as a good Kiwi. I know Australia/New Zealand has a big drinking culture, so it was always part of my life. I also used it for my social anxiety and for performing because I was always scared to get on stage, but it got too much and I wasn’t productive and the hangovers were brutal and I’d sleep through meetings and I’d blow off important appointments and it just got really bad. So deciding to stop drinking was crucial to me making this record actually. I could actually finish an album.

Best Gig
I played Glastonbury a couple of times but it was Glastonbury 2009. I played the John Peel Stage and that was the best feeling of my entire life, because I had been backstage just hanging out and I didn’t know how many people were there and I walked out and it was thousands of people. I couldn’t even see where they ended and there were people holding up Kiwis and New Zealand flags and sheep and all these people with homemade signs and I cried. The first song I went into was ‘Back of the Van’ and I got all choked up because people were singing so loud that I couldn’t hear myself sing. It was definitely one of the best moments of my life.

Best Trip
Two of my best friends got married a couple months after me in 2015, so they had the proper family wedding in New Zealand and then decided they were going to have a pagan wedding on a tiny remote Greek island. They were like, ‘If you guys want to come, we’d love to have you at the wedding’ It was a crazy journey to get there because I live in LA; we had to fly to Corfu and then get a boat to Paxos, which is the little island. It was just incredible. All our friends were there, just a little group of us and it was the most beautiful experience. The first night we jumped off the rocks into the water at about one in the morning and it has this thing called phosphorescence, where you put your hand in and all these bright lights light up the water. Everyone had to wear white and or gold, so I had this bright gold turtleneck – it was so hot there – and then I had these white sailor pants and canvas shoes and a gold headband. One guy was in a gold speedo; just a gold speedo. We all stood around this deck and literally you walked down the steps and there was the ocean, and it was just beautiful – reading poetry and me and a couple of friends sang ‘Whatta Man’ as my friend walked down the aisle. They had the opposite, the girl waiting and the man walking down the aisle. It was really cool.

Best Musical Experience
Writing this album was a really fun experience because it came so easily. But I’m going to say my first band that I was ever in, Two Lane Blacktop, when I was heaps younger, living in Wellington. I think because I was so young and it was such a formative time of my music career it was the most amazing experience of my life. Everything we did I was doing it for the first time, so gigging in front of 20 people – ‘Oh my god we sold 20 tickets’ – or touring New Zealand was the most fun thing I’d done in my entire life. We did shows in Australia, played at The Espy, all these awesome places that I’d known about, and then we did shows in America. Everything with that band, because I experienced everything for the first time, was the best feeling.

Best Advice
My mum and my step dad always said to me, “You can do anything you want to do, you’re amazing, you can be anything you want to be.” I think that was the best advice anyone has ever given me because they literally said it almost every day of my life. I got told, “You can do this, you can be anything, you can be a musician, you can be a doctor, you can be a designer, if you want to do music, do music, you’re amazing at it.” It built up confidence in me.

Best Celebrity You Have Hung Out With
I haven’t hung out with that many. I wouldn’t know what to say. I met Lorde the other night at a Kiwi party in LA and she was really sweet. I’ve been friends with Peaches for a long time and she’s always a really fun person.

Best Birthday You’ve Ever Had
I think it was 20012. I went to Disneyland for my birthday. I’ve been before but there was something about this one in particular that was magical. We stayed two nights, and every day from eight in the morning, like an over-excited child, I was waiting at the gates for Disneyland to open.

Best Things In Life
My family, video games, bed, sleeping, my wife; the fact that I can travel for a job is amazing.

Ladyhawke will be appearing at Yours & Owls Festival.

Yours & Owls Festival