From the glossy electropop of 2016 breakout single Roam to the sharp-edged hyperpop of ‘99% Angel’ EP, to the soft, organic reo Māori of her side project TE KAAHU, Em-Haley Walker’s artistry has evolved considerably over the past decade. ‘Girl, In A Savage World,’ Walker’s long-anticipated debut album as the artist Theia pushes that evolution still further. Melding folk, electropop and her Māori roots, the album sees Theia finding her own unique and purposeful voice. She talked with Nur Peach.

Transmitting over Zoom from a glitzy bedroom in LA, where she’s been based since 2023, Em-Haley Walker has just listened to the vinyl test pressing of her new album.

“I listened to it through like FaceTime with my manager Nicole [Thomas], because they couldn’t send it all the way over here to Los Angeles, it would take too long! I couldn’t hear it as clearly as I would if there was a vinyl in front of me, but we needed to sign off on it.

“It was cool, just getting to listen to all the songs and sort of hear what they sounded like. You could tell it felt really lush, you know, as the tone of vinyl does, and that you could feel some of the bass, and you could feel how nice the reverb sounded. As long as there’s no big jolts and it sounded good from Nicole’s end, then I’m good. I’m looking forward to having it in my hands!”

Basing herself in LA has meant being a lot closer to the various festivals and shows she’s been playing over the last few years, in the USA and Canada – both as Theia and Te Kaahu. As the latter she’s performed around California and repeatedly in Canada, including Folk Alliance in Montreal, the Calgary Folk Festival and Folk on the Rocks. Theia’s longer live performance resume includes numerous women’s festivals and Pride events in both countries.

Reflecting on the nine years of her artist career to date, Walker acknowledges that delivering this debut Theia album has taken more than a while.

“I feel like there’s always pressure to just hurry up and get your debut record out. And sometimes that can come with things just not being as good as they maybe could be, because you’re just trying to meet a deadline, as opposed to trying to develop this world.

“I know it’s a long time coming, but it feels like just the right time It. If it had happened at any other time, it would’ve been fine, I’m sure the album would be great. But this feels cohesive and perfect. Everything was so intentional, and the subject matter was very reflective of who I am and what my values are.”

It’s worth noting that while ‘Girl, In A Savage World’ is the first Theia album, Walker just a few years ago released an alt-folk reo Māori album under the artist name Te Kaahu. She cites the side project as instrumental to finding her voice, in more ways than one.

“It was the first time where I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. I think I found my truest voice.’ Previous to that, I guess you could say I sort of hid behind the production. I knew I could sing, but I didn’t necessarily think I had a great voice or anything. With Te Kaahu, I was like, ‘Holy shit, this is crazy! I didn’t know I’d been a soprano the whole time!’”

Her ‘Te Kaahu O Rangi’ album was also Walker’s first time of fully embracing her Māori heritage in her music. Since that 2022 release she’s experimented with reo Māori and bilingual songs as Theia. The bilingual ‘Girl, In A Savage World’, with themes of colonisation and uprising, sees this immersion complete.

“Te Kaahu sonically is all organic instrumentation, very old school sounding, catering to the palette of my grandmother and her generation. But I felt like in this record I’ve been able to establish my direction going forward, which is a fusing of the old school and the new.

“I feel like I’ve got the perfect mix, because Te Kaahu was so gentle, and that was the intention. I wanted it to be healing and lullaby-ish, but also I can’t not be me! I can’t ignore the defiant aspect of my personality.”

It’s this defiant streak that led Theia to leave Warner Music NZ several years ago, ahead of her 2020 ‘99% Angel’ EP. Going independent is a decision she doesn’t regret.

“I’m grateful for the fact that it gave me a great platform to be able to start on with the surprising success of Roam [15M Spotify plays to date], but at the same time, I feel like I was just trying to find my identity and my standing as a young woman, and as a music artist. I can see the pros if you’re just interested in doing pop music that appeases and is palatable to a large audience. However, as I started to grow up and grow stronger, I realised that I wanted to talk about whatever I wanted, which is misogyny, colonisation, all of these things.”

‘Girl, In A Savage World’ shows the fruits of this decision. Co-produced with Abraham Kunin, both in his Auckland studio and via internet distance. Walker did some vocal recording herself in LA and Seattle, and had more say in the production than ever before.

“I was trying to find someone who would embrace my wild, genre bending ideas and be cool with developing them with me. With some of my previous experiences in the pop world it’s like you really feel like you have no say. It just is the way it is sometimes when you’re new and haven’t explored your boundaries yet, as to how much feedback and development you can give.

“We did Baldh3ad! together, and I just really loved that. He respected my vision, was willing to help me realise it. And that ended up being a great test run because I was like, ‘Wow, I’ve finally got a sound that I really had in mind!’  We just sort of continued from there.”

The first seeds of her album came with Pray 4 Me, which was recorded at The Lab in Auckland, and is the one album track produced by Jol Mulholland. Released as a single in 2023, it includes the album title in the chorus – ‘I’m just a girl living in a savage world.’ Across the album’s 10 waiata Walker explores these spiritual beliefs in depth.

“That phrase was intended to twist the noble savage trope and the warrior gene trope on its head and show that we’re not savages. It’s in fact the world, and the folks who inflicted all this pain and loss on us, that are perhaps the savages. We were very, very happy with our own spiritual beliefs, and complex social system and communities beforehand.”

The edgy, driven girl-power anthem Hine-Nui-te-Pō does so especially well. Explaining that it’s about the Māori goddess of the underworld, Walker gushes with infectious enthusiasm.

“I read this article by Witi Ihimaera called The Redemption of Hine-Nui-te-Pō. We’ve all grown up with Maui, the demi-god, the trickster, as this heroic figure. And of course he is, but at the same time, he is a trickster, and he is imperfect, because he’s also mortal.

“The article was obviously about the most famous act of Maui concerning Hine-Nui-te-Pō, which was his pursuit of immortality by way of reversing the birthing process by crawling through her vagina, carrying his patu with him, aiming to cut out her heart and exit through her mouth.

“A bird started laughing because of the sight, and then Hine-Nui-te-Pō awoke, and she just crushed her legs on him, and that was the end of that! The idea was never really raised that in actuality, this is molestation and an act akin to rape. I just was feeling very, very passionate about wanting to put the focus on this remarkable, incredible, divine feminine atua and her strength and her resilience, and those attributes that are so positive and that reflect our traditional worldview of a woman’s ability to give and take life.

“The main purpose of the song is to show her as strong, resilient and a mother, as opposed to how she’s portrayed, especially in reference to the Maui story as a victim, and just something to be conquered.”

There is much theatrical intensity on ‘Girl, In A Savage World,’ but Walker’s best loved remains the gentle a cappella closer, I Picked a Flower from the Grave.

“It’s my favourite because of its vulnerability, and because of the image that comes to mind when I think of it. And the fact that it’s a chronicling of a lot of the specific damages and punishments that have been put upon my people through colonisation, and just being brutally honest about that. It’s always been a cappella, but I did experiment with whether it should have some instrumentation in it.

“I tried a similar palette to everything else on the record, like all the strings and whatnot. But I think its power is in the fact that it’s just voice, you know. And some of my favourite songs are a capella, like Tracy Chapman’s Behind the Wall and Sinead O’Connor’s Tiny Grief Song. They’re just really powerful.”

Putting the focus entirely on Walker’s ethereal voice and hard-hitting lyrics, her signature defiance becomes the quiet endurance of a steadily burning candle, as she sings of the brutal systemic racism her ancestors faced.

“When I go home to Waikato, one of my most peaceful places to be is my ancestral mountain, Taupiri. I sit with my great grandmother, and I sit on her grave, and I pick flowers, and I speak to her, and I sing to her. My grandmother was raised only in reo Māori. She had to learn English through the missionary schools, yet she would be beaten for speaking the language that she would speak at home, and my great grandparents didn’t know English.

“But also my great grandmother was very defiant and very fierce, and she refused to speak English, and my grandmother would have to go and translate for her and everything like that. Yet she was being punished for speaking it. I just wanted to acknowledge that pain and confront it.

“I also reference some of the abhorrent acts of the government and the crown towards our people, especially in some of our peace and resistance movements. The punishment for Parihaka followers, farmers that were just trying to ask for their right to farm their land and feed the communities, was being tethered to horses and dragged around the fields. And children were expected to go harvest the supplejack vines to be woven into a whip, to be beaten with until they bled for speaking their language.”

This is heavy subject matter, but Walker doesn’t shy away from it, reminding us all of the important place this kind of confrontational art holds.

“I don’t care if some people don’t like it,” Walker says confidently. “I trust my taste enough to know that, though I’m writing from a relatively niche place, the themes and the effects of colonisation are felt throughout indigenous communities all over the world.

“I’m wanting to talk about things that I don’t think are spoken about enough, because we are often silenced. And so to be able to do it in my own way, from my perspective as a Māori lesbian, is so cool, and if people don’t like it, then they probably need to do some internal searching, or address their internalised racism and whatever else is going on.”