Hawke of the town

An expression of profound disdain flashes across Pip Brown’s face. It’s a frosty spring afternoon in Paris but it isn’t the rigours of life on the road or the quality of hotel room service which are stoking her ire: it’s her home country’s obsession with chasing an egg-shaped object through the mud. “Everybody in New Zealand is fucking crazy about rugby,” thunders Brown – aka ‘80s-glazed fem-rocker Ladyhawke. ‘There’s such a macho culture – and if you don’t buy into it, you feel as if you totally don’t belong.”

Not fitting in has become something of a habit for Brown, whose emotive vintage pop has seen her tipped as one of 09’s buzziest contenders. Gangly and with a borderline personality disorder (more of which later), she refuses to wear women’s clothes (“I’m tall and I look stupid in them:) and dares splash a toe in the forbidden water of ‘80s cheese pop (with a little pressing, Brown admits to a fondness for Pat Benatar, though denies she’s an influence).
You could get a sense of how big Brown is poised to become when she touched down in Dublin recently for a sell-out debut. With a swooning audience roaring her on, the show was a triumph – surprisingly shy, Brown appeared genuinely overwhelmed by the love coming her way. But it could so easily have been a disaster: she nearly had to cancel when her flight was diverted from Dublin to Belfast on account of a dusting of snow on the runway.
“Oh my god – that was soo stressful,” she recalls. “We ended up on the runway in Belfast thinking, how are we going to make it to Dublin, are we going to have to pull the show? Then they sent a van up for us and we dashed straight to the venue. Totally nervewracking.”
Worse yet, when the gig did actually get underway, one of Brown’s laptops packed in half way through – she had to improvise the outro to a song while the computer went batshit crazy in the background.
“We’d been using a cheap replacement – which goes to show you never can trust technology, especially when it’s just been cobbled together.”
Speaking to Brown, you can’t help but be struck by her sometimes awkward manner – and a tendency to lapse into uncomfortable silences. This is a manifestation of Asberger's Syndrome – a mild autism characterised by a difficulty in interacting with other people. Officially, the subject is off limits, but Brown confesses she finds small-talk difficult: “It crops up in different ways. In social situations, you might misunderstand something – stuff like that. But I’ve made a rule not to talk about it.”
She’s happier discussing her multitude of allergies: she’s lactose intolerant and breaks out in a rash if she so much looks the wrong way at an avocado (there’s a bright side – at least she isn’t allergic to beer). “It’s such a pain because, on tour, you’re always stuck with eating crap because all the sandwiches have butter in them. It really takes a toll.”
Worse yet, Brown has found herself fighting a running battle with the airline industry over her dietary requirements.
“If you can’t eat dairy products, they assume you’re vegan. So they’re always trying to give you meals with avocado in them. And when I point out that I can’t eat that either, they can’t understand why I would get pissy.”
As for her supposed ‘80 obsession – in addition to cribbing notes from Bonnie Tyler and Stevie Nicks she takes her stage name from an uber-cheesy early Michelle Pfeiffer fantasy flick – Brown feels she’s been miscast as a shameless retronaut.
“It’s my own fault I suppose – but there’s more than the ‘80s in my music. My voice sounds nothing like Stevie Nicks. There are elements of ‘70s psychedelic rock in what I do. And I would hope I bring a modern sensibility to my music.”
Brown’s eye-grabbing dress sense has made her the toast of the UK hipster scene, where, to her discomfort, she’s becoming as famous for her tie-dyed headbands and bloke-shirts as for her music. However, that’s set to change: next month she’s planning on relocating to Los Angeles, to be close to her family. Well, closer anyway.
“It will be easier for me to get to New Zealand from the West Coast. My biggest following is in the UK so I need to be reasonably nearby for touring purposes. The thing that’s heartbreaking is that it’s so far from home. So I reckon California is a good compromise between the two. I don’t really know anyone out there. But that’s the story of my life. Whenever I go anyplace new, the first thing I have to do is try make some friends.”

Ladyhawke is out now