The first collection of music from Auckland singer-songwriter freya was an EP of songs written when she was 15. Now an eloquent young adult, releasing her debut album in the final stages of university undergraduate studies, she’s wary of being confined to any stereotypical ‘girl with a guitar’ image as a soft-voiced folk/pop artist. With ‘Of Water’ freya embraces the folktronica genre, delivering a deceptively shaded investigation of the journey of heartbreak. She talked with Richard Thorne about the album’s lineage.
Born and raised in Devonport on Tāmaki Makaurau’s North Shore, Alice Delargey Jones has moved just a few suburbs northward in the years since, attending Takapuna Grammar School in her teens. Freya is her middle name, and in her final high school year the talented young indie soft pop singer-songwriter, performing as freya, released a poised and well-produced EP titled ‘wildest creatures i’ve dreamed’. It seems reasonable to assume that her subsequent three years of study at the University of Auckland will have been towards a music degree. Not so.
“I’m studying a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and criminology. So it’s like a focus on people and society, and a lot of research essays. I really love it though!”
Leaving TGS in 2020 Alice did anticipate a life in music, and gave it a crack for six months – in what she describes as an 18 year-old, half-hearted kind of way – only to find herself not writing much.
“I wasn’t feeling that creative, after coming out of this time of progressing from writing and into the recording production phase for the first time, which I really, really loved.
“I look back on it now as a positive time where I learned a lot of, kind of life skills. But yeah, after six months I decided I did want to study – and not study music! I was just feeling like, if I was to do music as a full-time career, or study music full-time, it might conflict with my creative process. I find myself like very on and off, and kind of not good at adhering to deadlines or anything,” she giggles.
The song writing that has led to her 2025 debut album ‘Of Water’ came a couple years after, that creative spark rekindled, almost inevitably, by an affair of the heart.
“Yes, it was one particular relationship,” Alice admits with a reluctant smile. “Which was interesting, because it was my first time actually ever experiencing heartbreak. I’ve been writing heartbreak songs since I was like eight, but it was always quite like hypothetical and kind of like my fantasy version of what it could be like – and then this was the real thing!
“So, first of all the relationship was what actually helped me get back into a creative expression. And then I was writing these really devastating songs while I was still with him, which was a sign (!), and then also afterwards. So it’s like all of the songs were during and after that relationship.”
She describes it as fun to be able to pull on specific experiences she’d had, with one difference between the real and imaginary heartbreak apparent.
“I found that there was actually a lot more anger in these songs than there ever was in my kind of hypothesised breakup songs… Obviously very much despair and sadness, and maybe kind of more empowering or something?”
Helping transform her acoustic-strummed songs into an album was Harry Charles Leatherby, an experienced organic house music producer and occasional folky singer-songwriter. The two met at a MoveSpace singer-songwriters gig, immediately respecting each other’s artistry, having just separately performed live.
Talking afterwards, Leatherby told Alice he was looking to produce someone. With just acoustic guitar and lead vocals captured when she wrote them, Alice had been sitting on the songs for about a year, looking for the right producer to complete them with. Given her belief in the invisible workings of the universe, divine provision and the like, the alignment was too perfect to ignore. The two were soon working together at Leatherby’s home, completing much of the album recording over the summer.
“That was really fun for me. I’ve worked with electronic pop producers in the past, and I do really like that combination of like, electronic elements added to my acoustic folk songs. Yeah, so that’s where we came up with the ‘folktronica album’ genre thing, because it’s kind of a combination of my songs, with his influence of that house side of it.
“I’d say before I was doing kind of soft pop or something, but this time I think my musical taste when writing the songs and going into production has leaned more towards an organic folk sound. Adrianne Lenker is probably the number one inspiration for the songwriting for this album.
“I didn’t go all the way into that, like, totally stripped back acoustic folk, but we definitely wanted to leave it sparse enough to let the songs hold space as folk songs, for sure. The way that I write them is just me on my guitar, so I feel like they do stand alone, but the production for me is more like an ornamental process that makes it interesting, and really adds meaning to the lyrics.”
Introed by the confessional Pearl, with its allusions to being a diver, the album embraces a muted tranquility, albeit one laced with a sense of loss, confusion and sadness. There’s minimal use of band instrumentation, the songs mainly painted by her soft fragile voice and unusually-tuned guitar, backgrounded with carefully layered synth sounds. It’s easy to picture a darkened, candle-lit studio ambience where they were contrived.
“We aimed for a sort of haunted sonic world full of ghostly textures and dreamy swells, with danger and darkness trembling beneath the delicate surface,” Alice describes. “We worked for five months across the summer, fleshing out the songs with many guitar layers, vocal harmonies, atmospheric electronic ambience, and some driving percussion. It is so exciting to see the songs come to life – with new life breathed into them by a trusted collaborator.”
Lyrically a desperate plea for the acknowledgement of love, third track Body Of Water lent the album its name and over-arching theme.
“Yeah, that song is pretty central in terms of how it really captures the emotions of the album. I’ve been describing as the heart of the album because I think it’s the song where I most concisely get to the core feeling of despair that kind of underlies all of them, and encapsulates that breakup. It’s like a comprehensive expression of that feeling.”
The two minute long Waiting (Voice Memo) is so named because that’s what it was, the phone-captured sound of rain falling outside making any added musical watercolours almost unnecessary.
“There were points where we wanted to bring some songs to simplicity because we had too much else going around. It was more distracting than sort of uplifting the meaning of the song. I think it was Body Of Water where we tried to make a big outro, but we ended up cutting it back and really just relying on the vocal take that I did in the end. Because that alone kind of brings the chaos, I think. The vocals in the melody, and in the lyrics, and in the delivery hold so much emotional energy.
Around the time of album completion Alice / freya provided Auckland University’s student magazine Craccum with an article titled Nothing Written Down, One Take, No Shoes. It’s an insightful explanation of her very individual approach to songwriting, processes and values. Under Stage 1: Songwriting, the sub head is ‘Task: Retrieve a song from the ether and don’t let your mind get in the way.’ Stage 2 is Recording, with the task of ‘Compelling capture an emotional essence.’ Production is Stage 3, and the task description, ‘World-building with bravery and honesty.’
A strong aspect of spirituality is evidenced in her article, and Alice happily agrees there is a sense of the artist freya embodying her creative spirit.
“I do definitely see it that way. I see two sides of myself very much. Like freya is kind of the entity that I can embody to channel all kinds of spiritual and creative parts of me. So, I’m going to step into freya now for a performance, or something… And maybe I find it easier to command respect and attention when I sort of embody that side of myself.
“Whereas Alice is more who I am with my friends, and Alice is also the side of me who is at university studying, doing kind of logical stuff.”
She is not, she says, religious in any strict sense, but happy to label herself as spiritual, noting an association to the Norse goddess Freya. Learnt from her father who studied theology and philosophy, she reflects that a lot of “…the Buddhist-kind of mindfulness, meditative state” is involved in her creativity.
“In this album I’ve been drawing on a lot of kind of Celtic folklore, and spirituality sort of feeling. So that’s like an ancestral link, and I’ve been finding it coming through in some of the melodies. For me the songwriting process very much is the most spiritual, divine part of it, because that’s very much, to me, what it feels like. I’ve always described it as kind of channeling the song, and the thing I have to do is get out of the way.
“So I’ve always kind of partially attributed my songs and my creativity to like, connection to that force, or whatever it is, a mystical, spiritual, energetic world.”
