Foto-© Marieke Macklon

Das vierte Album Enter Now Brightness (VÖ: 07.02.25 via Chrysalis Records) stellte für die aus Neuseeland stammende und in Großbritannien lebende Singer/Songwriterin Nadia Reid einiges auf den Kopf. Erstmals in ihrer Karriere betrat sie das Studio ohne vorab eine Reihe von Songs geschrieben und aufgenommen zu haben. Während der Aufnahmen war Reid außerdem schwanger und wurde regelmäßig von morgendlicher Übelkeit geplagt (Fotos von ihr, schlafend auf dem Studiosofa gehören noch zu den angenehmeren Erinnerungen aus dieser Zeit). Doch die bevorstehende Mutterschaft schärfte auch ihren Songwriting-Fokus und markierte eine Abkehr von ihren akustischen Folk-Wurzeln. Das Album vertieft diese eingeschlagene Richtung nun erfolgreich und strotzt nur so vor voller Gelassenheit und großer Schönheit. In zehn Songs dokumentiert Reid darauf den Klang einer zellulären Veränderung, von Schmerz, der Zärtlichkeit und Freude weicht. Doch die bevorstehende Mutterschaft und später die komplizierte Erziehung ihrer Tochter brachten einen neuen Fokus für das Songwriting mit sich.

“I think for me, becoming a mother brought all of [the issues of] the inner child and all of my own mothering right back up to the surface,” erklärt sie. “A lot of women say that when they’ve had babies they’ve said to their own mums ‘Thank you so much!’ because they have this revelation of what their mother’s sacrificed for them. And I guess I had that in a different way.”

Zum Release des Album hat Nadia Reid uns ein Track by Track mit allem Wissenswerten zu Enter Now Brightness geschrieben!

Nadia Reid Tour:
04.03.25 Hamburg, Aalhaus
05.03.25 Berlin, Privatclub

1. Emmanuelle

I wrote this song when we were leaving our house in Dunedin and the place was relatively empty and I had this little baby. I guess I felt something I’d never thought about before, which was that there’s so much at stake now that she’s here. Before I was like I could live, I could die, it’s all fine, whatever. And now I’m like ‘I can’t die! What happens when I die and I leave her, leave both of them here. I need infinity. I need forever now. I’d need forever with them.

The meaning of the name Emmanuelle is ‘God is with us’ and I guess there’s a spiritual element to this song. I come from a family of deep atheists, and my husband is an atheist — I think the church has a lot to answer for and has damaged a lot of people. But when I think about death, and the idea that when we die that’s it, it gives me shivers down my spine. There needs to be more for me. When I think about the girls, about how they came to be and how they grew and their tenderness and innocence, I do believe in a divine god. It’s like a knowing.

2. Cry on Cue

I was given a room in Auckland to write songs — it was this beautiful windowless, soundproof room and they said ‘You can use this whenever you like.’ And so I was shutting myself away in this little studio, I would take water and coffee and my guitars and get into the zone, and it was just the most precious gift I could have had at that time. Cry On Cue is one of the songs I wrote there. It felt like the song that was missing on the record. It doesn’t feel too heavy, it’s very simple, only three chords and a little bit of a stream of consciousness.

I think in the lyrics I’m touching on the idea of a long term relationship and just how fucked it is sometimes, especially when you have a child. It’s sort of like ‘How the fuck do we do this? Is it forever? Is this what this is now?’ And just taking the pressure off, and giving each other grace. I’m really into Esther Perel and the idea of desire, and in all the domesticity of life I feel like our life is so deeply unsexy right now. And I know I’m not alone in that. It’s just unsexy, unsexy work.

3. Baby Bright

I wrote the first couple of lines of this song when I was at high school, and I finished it in that magical private room. It does feel like one of the most tender songs I’ve written, and it feels like a really important song to me. There’s just all sorts of people mashed into it. It began when I was thinking about this lovely man who I was friends with who threw himself off this big cliff by Saint Clair. So there’s a little bit of him there. And there’s my Mum in there. And there’s all the boyfriends. And there’s Elliotte. When she was born she had these massive bright blue eyes — she still does. And when she was born I did have this really intense drive to create — I felt very invigorated. Everything felt sharper and accessible and it all came to the surface.

4. Hold It Up

I remember I wrote this in lockdown in our house we’d bought at the end of 2019 in a suburb of Dunedin. It was right on the hill, like a treehouse, on a very lovely, lush section. So it was such a juxtaposition of the world ending, my career fizzling out, we weren’t pregnant yet. I’d bought a puppy like crazed person.

But it was this little haven. It was a relatively positive time, because the government paid us to stay at home and I did have these small windows of writing in that time and this song is one of the ones I wrote. It was interesting hearing the way that I wrote it, and the way I perform it, to how it ended up. It sounds kind of 90s. I feel like the video needs to be this choreographed girl squad. It feels very powerful.

It’s the idea that I can be kind to anyone now, tenderness towards the whole world, of being in love with the world. It’s seeing humans, even people that I think I have nothing in common with, and thinking ‘You are somebody’s precious baby.’

5. Changed Unchained

I think female folk was quite in vogue when I started, but it does feel confining. So when this went a little bit poppy and turned into this War on Drugs style power anthem, I was pleased. It was definitely all done in the studio. I think this is another example of Tom’s magic dust.

6. Second Nature

This is a really old song. It’s about an old boyfriend who I’m so glad I got away from. Not in a bad way, but it was one of those sort of ‘high intensity good for a short period, but just a walking disaster’ relationships. And when you look back, you realise it was all for a greater reason, even if it was painful at the time.

7. Even Now

This was the last song that was written, and it came to me on the Auckland motorway. It sounds so cliched, but often I will get phrases whilst I’m walking or driving or on the bus or at my dance class. I’ll get these phrases that I feel I need to capture and perhaps years and years ago I would put it in a notebook and now I put it on my phone.

My husband and I were having this really big road bump and the song is about that. We were just about to leave for the UK, we were waiting for all the paperwork to come through, we had this baby, and we were in this limbo. And Tom said to me at that time ‘I need you to write another song, keep writing. We need a Nadia song, like a guitar and voice.’ And I said ‘I’ve got nothing else to say. There’s nothing else!’ But I was in that special writing room and the spirit or the muse came down. 

It’s a little bit about the departure from New Zealand. Everyone said to me ‘Why would you move to England?’ But I had this really nice conversation with my friend Sean who’s also a musician, and slightly older, and he said – I think he was very stoned – but he said ‘You have to leave, even if it’s just for your writing, you have to get out of this place and open the gates and open the mind.’

It’s a little bit about leaving where my Mum and Dad are, needing oceans between us. And about leaving my homeland. I had begun to feel very suffocated and ceiling-ed and I couldn’t think properly, I couldn’t figure out what I thought about things. And so this is a little bit about the distance required and the distance desired. 

8. Hotel Santa Cruz

I wrote this in Tenerife and it turned out to be quite hooky. It’s just a series of questions. I feel quite moved at the end, with the line ‘You are everything I’d like to be’. I always give myself goosebumps when I perform that line. But I’m not sure who I’m referring to. Sometimes I think it’s Angus or my children, or maybe this is a God thing, or it’s just my imagination. 

9. Woman Apart

I was thinking about the Michelle Shocked song Anchorage, and how I love the way that it’s basically a letter to her friend. I think I kind of referenced that, it feels a little bit like a report. I haven’t quite figured out what it’s about — it all feels a little bit foreign to me, this one. Perhaps it’s about stepping into my adulthood and stepping into being a woman and enjoying that. 

10. Send It Down the Line

This to me is one of the most meaningful songs on the album, and I think it fits well being the last song. It’s me Sam and Tom in his small room basically riding on the vibe or whatever. It’s an example of a song coming from wherever songs come from, and it’s really tender. I think this is about my Mum and how this intergenerational baggage and trauma has to stop here. I was thinking about being in our mother’s womb, and how I was an egg even inside of my grandmother. Just the crazy thing of knowing that I’ve got that in me, all of this. And giving a lot of grace to my Mum. And then there was also this phrase from when I was tending to Elliotte in those early days, I’d just say to her ‘Here I am, here I am.’ This phrase that kept coming up and up when she was born. It is very emotional sometimes to perform this one. I feel like I’ve captured the tenderness of it all, of everything.