16 July 2021 - 0 Comments

Lips is a four-piece musical project led by Steph Brown (she/her) and Fen Ikner (he/him) based in Tamaki Makaurau. Lips' music finds its roots in the familiar melodies of homegrown Indie, the tender embrace of Synth Pop, and the humorous side-eye of American New Wave. Ultimately resulting in a sound that's a celebration of feeling awkward and embracing it anyway.

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"We didn’t take the traditional route to releasing this album." says Steph. "Back in 2013/4 we started working on a full-length, but then doglegged and went on tour with a musical play for three years, which then became a feature film Daffodils for which we arranged, scored, and wrote original songs. In each of those mediums we learned a lot about storytelling through music, specifically putting narrative into song and music production to tell a story."

"When we finally finished the film and came back around to the album, we found that this experience had changed our approach to conceptualizing the music and recording. We looked at almost every song as though it were a scene in a movie, and then recorded the song as though it were accompanying that scene, oftentimes injecting sound design into the tracks. The most obvious example of this is in the song 'Sometimes I’m Afraid', which tells the story of someone growing ever more insecure in their relationship. There’s a line in the song “I feel it especially when your bandmates come around, All I wanna do is go to ground” and we decided that we would record the whole song as though she is telling you her story while her partner’s band is rehearsing in the room next door. So we literally recorded the band through the wall, while the vocal is super intimate, like she's right there in front of you."

After nearly a decade of work, the final result is an album filled with sounds sourced from a truly wide palette of influences and a jubilant melancholy that could only come from Lips.

To celebrate the release of I Don't Know Why I Do Anything, Lips are hitting the road, traveling the length and breadth of Aotearoa throughout Hongongoi (July) and Here-turi-koka (August).

The tour is a co-headline event, with Lips sharing the van with Tamaki Makaurau group Phoebe Rings. The band centers around the songwriting of Crystal Choi (she/her), a sought after keys player who has toured with Princess Chelsea, Chelsea Jade and A.C. Freazy. The band's dream pop echoes are further aided by the playing of Alex Freer (he/him, A.C. Freazy), Simeon Kavanagh-Vincent (he/him, Lucky Boy^), and Benjamin Locke (he/him, Sea Views). Their debut single Cheshire was a favourite on the SRN stations and they've just released a stellar follow up Spissky.

While their debut album I Don't Know Why I Do Anything has been a long time coming, it's not like Lips haven't been busy. Since their inception in the late 00's the band have released a handful of singles and EPs, won the Silver Scroll Award in 2012 for Everything To Me, toured internationally as musical directors and performers in award winning musical stage play Daffodils, which they later went on to music direct and score as a feature film.

Eager to re-engage with playing original music Steph and Fen enlisted the help of Ruby Walsh (she/her, Dateline, Trip Pony) and Maude Morris (she/her, Lexxa). In 2019 the band released Guilty Talk (mixed by Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Silicon’s Kody Nielson), which went to Number 1 on NZ’s Student Radio Network. In 2020 the Covid-19 lockdowns led the band to finally finish their long awaited debut release.

Photo Credit Lula Cucchiara

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