Extending a catalogue of diversely successful indie releases, Ōtepoti artist Neive Strang has returned with her third album. Compiled over a four year period, ‘Find Me in the Rabbit Hole’ is a collection of dreamily contemplative songs that hinge on the richness of her voice, along with the well-proven production genius of SJD. Michaela Tempany talked with her on the album’s release.

Stretching with apparent ease from unadorned alternative folk to band-backed indie rock to bedroom pop, Neive Strang has repeatedly demonstrated her creative versatility since 2018’s ‘Expectations’ EP. Her music is genuine, with an edge that makes it equally effective in singer-songwriter mode as it is in a live rock band. 

The pragmatic, dreamy 2023 single Living in Two was her first song to be produced and mixed by Sean Donnelly (SJD), and that collaboration has now delivered a singer-songwriter album of sparse honesty.

“‘Find Me in the Rabbit Hole’ is very different from my previous EP,” Neive says reflectively. “When you bring songs to a band, and develop them that way, they’re going to be a lot rockier. I think I just approached these songs differently. I wrote them and with SJD, my producer, we sort of built them from the ground up.” 

It’s clear what she means. There’s an ornate restraint to both the songwriting and the production, with warm vocals, soft drums, clever guitar riffs and subtle touches. Written on piano or guitar, with Donnelly adding bass and other decorative elements, the breadth inside the songs is captivating. 

“I think the most important thing to me is that SJD and I became friends and it all felt really natural. I wanted to feel like I was working with a friend, and he obviously had really great ideas. He wasn’t overpowering or trying to put his sound on my songs. He wanted to let the lyrics and vocals shine. He let them breathe!”

Both with recording and live performances Neive has surrounded herself with a community of talented artists. Easy to see how this has occurred; she is soft-spoken, warm and clever. She has been supported on her musical journey since high school, winning a slew of awards and gigging from quite young. 

“I’m from a musical family,” she explains. “My parents are both musical. They met in a band. I got into music because I grew up with my mother always playing her songs, and watching her express herself in that way. It just always felt like second nature to me to do the same. It felt quite, umm, I shouldn’t say easy, but like there were people helping me, like really helping young musicians do it.”

Donnelly has described her as a thoughtful songwriter with a great singing voice. “She is also an astute lyricist, who has a knack for knowing when space and silence will say more than an excess of words.” 

Having produced, recorded and mixed the album, along with being co-writer and performing on most tracks, Donnelly also shot and directed the video for Gather Round.

Channeling the intimate gandeur of Mazzy Star and vocal vibrancy of a classic Joni Mitchell track, Gather Round is both self-reflective and whole-hearted. The bedroom pop-defining music video is itself charmingly gentle in conveying the song’s tension between personal comfort and social pressures.

Although it isn’t a concept album, ‘Find Me in the Rabbit Hole’ was written over a long period, and Neive says captures some of the most transformative years of her life, including the end of a long term relationship. ‘It’s time to rearrange and move along, whatever should happen, I’ll be gone,’ she sings in So Far Out.

“There’s definitely a lot of growth in the songs,” Neive admits. “They are about lots of different things that were going on for me.” 

Case in point, the broody Turmoil begins with the line, ‘Turmoil knows my name / it looks at me like we’re the same.’ Towards the middle of the song she croons, ‘Nothing’s healthy when it gets this bad / sit me down and tell me I’m sad,’ to a backing of little more than brushed snare drum (Chris O’Connor, or possibly the artist herself), and lightly picked guitar. 

A big part of why Neive Strang writes songs is to express herself. Asked about the album’s titular track, she obfuscates with a charming nonchalance.

“To get the meaning of that title you have to listen to the song, and hopefully it reveals itself. I find it quite hard to articulate what my songs are about, but when I’m singing them I wholeheartedly can feel what I mean.”

Demoed while he was living in Dunedin, much of the recording was done in Donnelly’s Auckland home studio, with parts at Roundhead Studios and a stint at South Link Productions’ Dunedin studio. 

“The recording process was pretty seamless actually. The editing took a long time, but the actual recording process was really quick. I had intended to go up to Auckland for 10 days, but ended up coming back in seven! I think because we had spent so much time demo-ing the tracks, we knew what we needed to do, and it was more just experimental, whether we wanted to add in anything extra.”

The earlier released SJD-produced songs missed the cut.

“I was going to include the singles Living in Two and Could I Reset, but I just felt like they were too separate and too early, and they just didn’t belong as a part of it anymore.” 

Her third studio album, Neive is by now plenty familiar with the process of releasing music. 

“While we were demo-ing the songs, it was so drawn out that I was writing at the same time, because the whole process felt so creative. Right now I’m not writing at all, because my mind is so occupied with these songs. I’m just basking in the release at the moment!”

Planning to head to the UK with her partner and do some travelling over the European summer, she recently also started her own record label, Polly B Records. 

“What can I say about it?” she laughs. “Honestly, I did it because I am going overseas pretty soon and it was really a way of me thinking how I can release all of my records, all of my vinyl, and then make all the money back myself? I want to be making the money off of my music!” 

Now that ‘Find Me in the Rabbit Hole’ is finally out in the world, she expresses a sense of calm. 

“You’re sort of, you know, building up to the release and it’s an exciting period. But it’s a busy period and so there is a sense of calm and a little bit of sadness once it goes. But it’s a good, happy-sad.”