Fazerdaze Walks Us Through Her New Album Soft Power Track by Track

Amelia Murray, better known as Fazerdaze, released her sunny yet plaintive dream pop debut Morningside in May of 2017, coinciding perfectly with my graduation from college and a thoroughly lackadaisical summer. During that time, I was either unemployed and trying to spend as little money as possible, or working in a crappy restaurant and attempting not to cry when the owner yelled at me (I didn’t succeed). Those three months stretched out into what felt like years—the same way Fazerdaze’s exquisite voice unfurls and lengthens in the background of “Jennifer”—becoming a liminal period that somehow felt nostalgic even as I was living it. I could imagine myself looking back on that summer, a future Clare watching me while I read a book in a park (a top-tier free activity) or wandered through a gallery, and undoubtedly I knew that Fazerdaze’s wistful songs would be the soundtrack to these memories.

Seven years later, and Fazerdaze has shared her gorgeous sophomore record Soft Power, which once again accompanies a transitional time in my life: I’m on the precipice of 30 and feel myself solidly and (to my surprise) happily slipping into real adulthood. I’ve found solace in Fazerdaze’s new album, which has an undeniably larger, more complex sound, from the indie pop crunch of “So Easy,” to the contemplatively electronic “A Thousand Years,” to the piercing euphoria of “Cherry Pie.” Soft Power was a lodestar for Fazerdaze during the most harrowing time in her life, and the album’s celestial synth pop is sure to provide the same comfort to others, myself included. Fazerdaze was kind enough to walk Paste through Soft Power track by track, diving into the meaning and creative process behind each song.

“Soft Power”

The splash entry into the record. The mantra of this era of my life and the learnings deep within it. This was the start of trusting in something so much bigger than myself, finding my light rather than searching for it in everyone else. We recorded the drums for this about three times, I was obsessed with capturing the right groove. Eventually, I came into the studio with exact drum notation for the drummer, including each and every drum fill, and this is what we landed on.

“So Easy”

This is maybe the most pop I get on the record (songwriting-wise). I used distortion on every audio channel and then sent each distorted channel to a master distortion bus. This song has themes of escapism and flow state and the serotonin hit you get from both! The bass playing is a combination of me and Justin Meldal-Johnson (Nine Inch Nails, Deafheaven, Air), who’s a musical hero of mine.

“Bigger”

“Bigger” came at a time in my life when I was a very devoted and self-sacrificing kind of partner. I have a tendency to love so deeply that I allow myself to be forgotten in relationships. This song is me wrestling to have both my career and a stable relationship, which is kind of hard when my job takes me away from home a lot of the time.

“Dancing Years”

When I wrote this, we were entering the 2020s, I was in my late 20s, it was the pandemic, and I was entangled in a relationship with a man 20 years older than me. The number 20 was pinging at me all the time. I was thinking about the Roaring ‘20s a hundred years ago, the “dancing years,” and thinking how my life couldn’t be further from it: domesticated, stagnant, stuck. I felt like I was eroding. My psyche felt dark, and you can hear it in this song. I love the guitar solo and the swapping between live drums and drum machines. We tracked these drums in Alex Freer’s (drummer) living room in Mount Eden, Auckland.

“In Blue”

Ben Barter (Lorde’s drummer) tracked the drums in his home studio in LA and sent me the stems. I cut them together and mixed them with Simon Gooding via Zoom. I love how the end explodes into this anthemic moment. The song has themes of long distance love, and feelings of being seen after seasons of blueness, depression, invisibility.

“A Thousand Years”

I found this recording on my phone of me tinkering around on a beautiful old Wurlitzer. I ended up chopping it up, looping it and creating this beat. I didn’t have access to the Wurlitzer anymore so I literally just used the phone recording in this final version. This is probably my most electronic song to date in terms of its structure and with all other instrumentation being made “in the box.”

“Purple_02”

I was getting tired of recording and writing at my desk so I decided to rebuild my studio on the living room floor. This is one of the tracks that stuck from that session—I love this beat that I programmed laying down at my laptop. I later jammed the beat with Bic Runga and Cass Basil (a.k.a. King Sweeties) to further develop the structure of the song and then wrote the guitar solo with Gareth Thomas. This was initially going to be an instrumental on the album, but I wrote some vocals and lyrics last minute before hand in.

“Distorted Dreams”

This was one of the first tracks I wrote for Soft Power. Morningside (my first record) had come out and I was quickly losing myself in the whirlwind of touring and success. All my dreams were coming true yet I was the unhappiest and most insecure I had felt in my life.

“Cherry Pie”

The song was a long time in the making. I wrote the bulk of the lyrics during my first ever trip to LA back almost 10 years ago. I found the lyrics on my phone years later and thought to turn it into a song. Then I wrestled with it through many different versions, structures, production styles, lengths. I ended up so lost with it, and sent the different versions to Aaron Short (The Naked and Famous, Space Above). He listened through the many versions and cherry picked (sorry) the best from each demo and finally the song had a direction.

“Sleeper”

The world of sleep. The in-between of waking and dream. As someone that struggles with depression and mental health, sleep is my safe space, a place I get to escape from the anxieties of the day. It’s kind of about not wanting to wake up, and wanting to stay in that watery, dark place.

“City Glitter”

My ode to Auckland city. The city that built me then destroyed me. The melancholy of leaving it all behind, and moving down south to Christchurch to rebuild a quieter, safer, more grounded life.