IT’S COLE, OUTSIDE
Siena Yates She has friends making a living in creative industries and once she realised that, everything clicked.
“I was like; ‘oh what am I doing here? I’m silly to stay’,” she says. Besides, “being in love helps.”
She met her partner while he was visiting family in New Zealand and they did 10 months longdistance when he returned to Berlin. Now, she’s going to join him.
But that means leaving her loyal fan base in New Zealand, so she’s releasing her new album
on Friday, before embarking on a farewell tour.
Cole promises that though everything else may have changed, the way she writes hasn’t. “I write the way that I live. My biggest drive in life is to connect to someone and in order to do that, you have to show them yourself. The more you can see of me, the closer we can get, and I get a kick out of getting close to someone,” she says.
She’ll be playing shows in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch next month before leaving for Berlin near the end of April. “We’ll mainly play the new album because they’ll be the only shows I play before I move.
“I want to play them at least once before I go.” The Lay of the Land
Cole has been slogging away in the New Zealand music scene for the better part of a decade, releasing a handful of EPs and albums while resisting the urge to go the way of many other successful Kiwi artists by moving LA to pursue their careers.
“I was never ready. And then I started opening up to the idea because I was starting to see how tiny the bubble — the music industry in New Zealand — is,” she says.
“So I was open to the idea of moving but then it was, where?”
Eventually, she settled on Berlin.
five years since Lydia Cole last released an album, every single aspect of her life has changed.
She’s living somewhere different, her “relationship scene” is different, and — most importantly — her outlook on life in terms of religion and spirituality is in “a totally different place”.
After the release of her last album, Cole gave music a rest and got a job in a coffee shop instead; meeting people, experiencing life, “going through my 20s”.
“It’s changed me a lot . . . I’ve grown up a little bit and my brain has expanded so I’m not so black and white on things any more, and I think that’s where the spirituality thing comes in,” she says.
She used to subscribe to some form of Christianity and although hesitant to go into detail she’s quick to clarify she still believes in God, just without all the Christian discourse.
“When you’re not living in fear, struggling to filter everything into this tidy, explainable box . . . I just feel like I’ve got so much more wonder about the world now. I’m not trying to change anyone or change who I am,” she says.
That’s why she’s finally decided to go and see more of it.