Singer Brooke Fraser Sheds Her Pop Folk Skin

Following a trio of successful folk-pop albums, Wellington-born singer Brooke Fraser, 31, re-emerged in 2014 with Brutal Romantic, a collection of dark, nervy electronica that doesn’t easily invite reductive descriptors like “organic” or “rootsy.”

A bona fide star in her native New Zealand, Fraser originally broke through to mass audiences more than a decade ago with 2003’s What to Do With Daylight, a collection of largely organic tunes that started her down the path to becoming one of her country’s biggest-selling artists. She followed that with Albertine in 2006, then Flags in 2011. The former featured the award-winning single “Something in the Water,” a Mumford-esque ditty with one of those ubiquitous whoa-whoa choruses.

While Fraser could very well have ridden that tried-and-true stadium-folk formula for the rest of her career, for Brutal Romantic she elected instead to make a clean break. She wrote all over the globe – Sydney, Stockholm and even an island in the Baltic Sea – and enlisted intrepid English producer David Kosten (Bat for Lashes).

Fraser is currently on tour in North America. She plays The Sinclair in Boston on 14 February before three dates in Canada.

Original article by Nashville Scene, Jon Freeman, February 5, 2015.