NYLON - January 2009 - (Page 132) crystal vision Pip Brown is creasing up, trying to suppress a giggle, as she recalls a time when, while she was working in the changing rooms at a clothes store, a customer let rip a mammoth fart. “I seriously couldn’t restrain myself, I just burst out laughing right in front of her,” recalls Brown. As Ladyhawke, she’s the purveyor of hook-heavy pop, blushing with an unforced nostalgia that can, sometimes, make you see your life in montage. As herself, Brown is easy company. Over an afternoon beer in King’s Cross, London, we agree that people falling over is also funny, particularly when they’re runway models in skyscraping heels, shoes that this 27-year-old singer wouldn’t be caught dead in. “If I put on a dress, I feel like a man!” She also proclaims herself a massive video game nerd—name a console, vintage or current, and she’s got it. I tell Brown that her twinkling tune “Back of the Van” reminds me of being at summer camp and kissing my first crush on the cheek. “That’s totally, exactly, what it’s about,” she grins, blinking between her choppy blonde bangs. “Just sitting in the back of the van with someone and just one little touch and it’s like [gasps] and no one else knows. Starry-eyed young love.” Born in the small town of Masterton, New Zealand, Brown was brought up in a musical household, and messed around on multiple instruments while still a kid. At 20 she was the guitarist in scuzz-rock outfit Two Lane Blacktop, but two years later they imploded just days before the start of a tour. For Brown it was a turning point: she packed up and used the already booked plane ticket to move to Sydney. After another musical endeavour called Teenager, Brown went solo, working with Belgian writer/producer Pascal Gabriel (Dido, Miss Kittin, S’Express), and traded Australia for London. Brown’s eponymous debut spills over with indelible melodies (think Stevie Nicks meets Cyndi Lauper), and polished confidence that has garnered her compliments from the likes of Kylie, Peaches, and Courtney Love, but onstage Ladyhawke is a ball of gawkiness, hiding beneath her hat, shrinking into her flannel shirt. “When I see loads of people staring I think they’re not here to see me, they’re here to judge me,” says Brown. “I get clouded by my own inhibitions.” She says it’s not until she performs “Paris is Burning”—an exuberant number about a weekend spent tearing up the city with kooky singer/actress Soko— that the clouds clear and she can see the audience singing every word. Her awkwardness can in part be explained by a recent diagnosis of a mild form of Asperger’s Syndrome. Brown LADYHAWKE’S SONGS ARE TINGED WITH A NOSTALGIC . BY SOLD SENSIBILITY THAT RECALLS STEVIE NICKS. WE’REA KOPECNA ETT. PHOTOGRAPHED BY PAVL KIM TAYLOR BENN is reticent to talk about it, and anxious to point out that she’s not pulling a sympathy card, but rather that the story leaked when she was relating to a journalist whose son is also a sufferer. “I’d been struggling with certain things for a long time and wondering why I was the way I was,” she explains. “Why I couldn’t look people in the eye, or I’d walk into a room and get terrified and have to leave, so when I found out, a lot of things fell into place.” On her MySpace page is a quote taken from Lester Bangs in Almost Famous: “Don’t let those swill merchants re-write you.” “It’s perfect, it sums me up,” she says defiantly. “I’ve had that there since day one. I don’t want anyone to make me wear anything, or sound a certain way. I’ll take whatever comes my way; at least I know I’m doing what I want.” 132
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