“I think I’ve always had a down-to-Earth attitude towards it because it has been a slow growing thing,” Fullbrook assures me. “I haven’t been an overnight success or anything. I’ve kind of wanted it to be like that. I think everyone wants to be successful but it’s just slowly growing and I’m still learning a lot.”
Since the release of Some Were Meant for Sea first starting making waves globally, Tiny Ruins has been steadily building her fan base, both locally and internationally. The release of Brightly Painted One is her first through the Bella Union record label in the UK and Europe and Flying Nun in North America.
“I think the music industry is based on all these chain reactions and having a good team around you, which I’m slowly starting to build up,” says Fullbrook on the forging of these new musical partnerships. “They’re really personable, awesome people to work with and that makes a huge difference when you’re trying to navigate your way around the music industry. So it makes a really big difference to have your music put out into the world. I’m lucky that I’ve found these guys.”
For the recording of Brightly Painted One, Fullbrook and her fellow band mates – bassist Cass Basil and drummer Alexander Freer – returned to their hometown in Auckland where they laid down tracks for the new record with producer Tom Healy at The Lab.
“The Lab is this underground, very dusty, rusty and dated underground passageways here in my hometown Auckland,” says Fullbrook with a laugh. “A whole bunch of bands record there; it’s been running for many, many years and it’s one of the more approachable studios, it’s not a big flash studio. It’s got lots of little rooms and it’s where people can set up almost kind of bedroom-style home recordings.”
It was a recording method that suited Fullbrook and co. perfectly. After all, Tiny Ruins started out in a bedroom, somewhere in Auckland with the songwriter crafting her delicate, folk pop.
“It was very snug, the three of us all together in a room,” she reflects. “It was an intimate way to record.” The artwork for Brightly Painted One also seems to have been a marriage that came together perfectly.“The artwork was decided on before the album title and it’s kind of a coincidence that the artwork and the title ended up really suiting each other,” Fullbrook admits. “I was actually thinking a lot about figures of strength, particularly females. I wanted a female figure or character on the front cover. I was searching images of Joan of Arc and came across this old book cover from the ‘60s which was really striking. So it’s sort of using that particular book cover as the cover art.”
With the release of Brightly Painted One, a mountain of touring lies ahead for the band, where they’ll be playing a string of shows across the globe before opening for Sharon Van Etten in October.
It’s the next phase in the rise and rise of Tiny Ruins. “We’re heading off to Oz, then onto the US and Canada and Europe and then back to the US. So it’s kind of a five-month crazy adventure that we’re about to embark on. Australia is a really cool place to start with because we’ve always found our audiences there to be really warm and appreciative and we’re looking forward to being back.”
BY JAMES NICOLI
