Anna Coddington leans into a brand new sound

Saturday, 22 June 2024

Musician Anna Coddington says she wants a simple life, to “just have a nice time”. But as Felicity Monk quickly discovers, “easy” might look a little different to Coddington than to the rest of us.

Anna Coddington (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa, Ngāti Whakaue) is many things – musician, mentor, law student, mother-of-two, second-dan karate black belt, children’s book author and reo Māori reclaimer – but a show-off isn’t one of them.

The past 18 months have been a particularly intense time for Coddington and her family. They lost their house in last year’s Auckland floods, she has been juggling a full-time law degree with young kids and all the while learning how to live with long Covid. So the fact that she is about to release her fifth album is certainly something to show off about – though she won’t.

Te Whakamiha (a rough translation of the name of Coddington’s longtime band The Appreciations) is set to be released on the Matariki holiday (June 28). It’s a departure from her previous albums; a bilingual body of work in te reo Māori and English, it’s the most collaborative album she’s ever made and it heralds a brand new sound, one which she loosely describes as “Māori funk'. Think R&B, rock, soul, pop and lashings of Prince-inspired funk.

It’s the kind of music that you can’t sit still to – upbeat and infectious – and that’s exactly what Coddington was hoping for. The genesis of the album, she says, came from a gig that she and her band (Jol Mulholland, Fen Ikner and Mike Hall) played at the Māoriland Film Festival closing party. “We did a set and it was great and people liked it. But when we finished, the DJ put on This is How We Do It (Coddington sings the chorus line of the 1995 Montell Jordan hit while doing enthusiastic chair dancing) and everyone on the dance floor was like: ‘Yeah!’ And I thought, I want to be able to get people doing that while we are playing… Let's make that album.”

Prior to making Te Whakamiha, Coddington found her relationship to music and the role it played in her life was changing. “It's always been my passion, but also my job. I think with going to law school, it allowed me to really let go of the idea of music being a job. Once I accepted that, it changed everything. It was like, okay, well if we're not doing it for that [a job and income], then why are we doing it?”

Of course, she says, making music is also about catharsis, self-expression and processing emotions, but she did all that in her last album, Beams (“a whole album about identity crisis and becoming a mother”). It was time for a change. With Te Whakamiha, Coddington just wanted to have fun creating and playing music with her friends.

“We went into this album with the idea that we're gonna make fun songs, with a sick rhythm section and cool, hooky melodies.” All the songs on the album were written in collaboration with others. Three of the eight tracks came out of the SongHubs project run by music rights management organisation APRA, one she wrote with TE KAAHU (who also performs as Theia) and the remaining tracks were written with her producer Jol Mulholland, or with the whole band. Coddington loves the result. “It's got all the goodness that comes from all those other people that were involved in writing the songs, so I think it's quite unique.”

Creating the album in te reo was the natural next step in Coddington’s progression as a Māori language learner and as a songwriter. “My reo journey has been one of the big cornerstones of what I've been up to for the last few years, since my kids started kohanga.”

Growing up, te reo was not spoken in Coddington’s house. “It was our koro’s first language. He was in the Native Schools Act generation where they were punished for speaking it at school. He had seven kids and was like, ‘Don't want you fellas to get beaten at school for speaking Māori. So speak English, please.’”

Her sons, along with their cousins, are now in rūmaki (full immersion) schooling. They can all speak reo to one another. “That’s language revitalisation,” she says proudly.

Coddington worked with a Mātanga reo Māori language expert who helped her write songs in Māori for Te Whakamiha. “When you are learning te reo Māori you start with learning how to say basic sentences. But the next level of mastery in Māori is poetic, it’s metaphors and proverbs. I haven’t mastered that yet by any means, but being able to write songs in Māori, that's the next step for me.”

It’s clear 2023 was, says Coddington in her rather understated way, “quite a time”. On January 27, the day of the Auckland floods, she, her partner musician/DJ Dick Johnson and their sons, Arlo and Eddie Ray, found themselves trapped on the second floor of their house, with rising floodwaters. “By the time we realised we needed to get out, we couldn’t.” Their neighbour helped them escape out a bedroom window and into a kayak, at which point the water was over four metres deep.

Coddington and Johnson’s house sat in a dip behind Grey Lynn Park (“turns out it should never have been built there”). When the park flooded, she says, it overtopped the bund that had been designed to hold water and it was “like rapids coming straight for our house”.

The council bought out their house in what was a mercifully fast process, a sign of just how badly damaged their home was. Coddington and Johnson managed to buy another home, not far from their old one.

But the year wasn’t finished with her yet. Coddington was diagnosed with long Covid and has spent much of the past year working with a physio who specialises in treating people with it. “Part of the physio is rebuilding diaphragm strength, which is crucial for singing. It’s really affected my breathing and my ability to sing.” For a person who gets a lot done, it’s been quite the challenge slowing down, taking day naps and adjusting to not being able to run regularly.

Despite it all, in December, Coddington published her first children’s book, Blue, Blue Christmas in te reo and English. It’s an adorable story of a kid who is worried that Santa might not realise how hot it is in Aotearoa at Christmas time. She says she wrote it on her phone during lockdown and emailed it to the publishers who said: “Yeah, we’ll publish that.” Cue: the collective sigh of wannabe authors around the country.

Coddington is part of a tight-knit group of female musicians “of a certain vintage”. They call themselves the ‘Coven’, and members include Anika Moa, Hollie Smith, Julia Deans, Reb Fountain, Mel Parsons, MC Tali, Tami Neilson, Steph Brown, Ria Hall and Bella Kalolo. She can’t remember how the Coven got its start, but says they were all already friends.

“Someone would have made a group and gone, ‘Let’s hang out’. Probably Anika, she’s a good one for: ‘Everyone come to my house’.”

Coddington says the friends share “the unique experience of being mature women in the music industry. And for those of us who are mums, that’s a very unique experience. We don’t really do any witchcraft, unfortunately. We just have potluck lunches and get all our kids together.”

But actually, there is more to the Coven than potluck lunches. The group is incredibly supportive of one another, and others in the industry. Whether it’s holding a gig to support a venue doing it tough post-lockdowns, or coming together for a one-off performance to support Ria Hall in her bid for mayor of Tauranga. “Oh yeah,” says Coddington, “that’s a good example of the Coven covening.”

Actor/director Aidee Walker is one of Coddington’s closest friends, their friendship spans nearly 30 years. They met as third formers at Hamilton Girls High School and have collaborated in some capacity ever since. In 1996, together with their friend Janna Hawkins, they started the band Handsome Geoffrey, which went on to win the 1998 National Smokefreerockquest. Later, after all three had moved to Auckland, they formed a new band, Duchess, with the addition of Jonny Corker.

After a couple of years, Duchess disbanded as their careers pulled them in different directions: Walker into acting and Coddington made the move to become a solo artist. Walker has directed five of Coddington’s music videos and more recently invited her to be music supervisor for local drama Kid Sister, which Walker was directing. She says they work really well together.

“She makes my job so much easier. She's very efficient. She wrote us a couple of brand new songs for the show, one of them she wrote overnight. While a law student and a mum, she puts an album out, while she's doing music for a TV show. She's incredible. And she would still think she's not ever doing enough, which is insane to everyone around her. We're always like, ‘What are you talking about?’ She's a remarkable human being.”

Coddington is nearing the end of her law degree at AUT and is loving it. She calls herself a “massive nerd” (the law degree will add to the MA in Linguistics she already has). She’s not yet sure what kind of law she will pursue because she’s finding it all interesting. Though she does admit to feeling scared of full-time work – somewhat ironic given her extraordinary work ethic.

“Having pretty much always been self-employed, I've been the master of my own schedule. I think the main thing that I fear is being told where to be and when; of not having control over my own time. But I feel like I need to give a go because I’ve never tried it.”

Is a tour of Te Whakamiha on the cards? Yes, but not right now. Between law school, long Covid, the cost of living crisis and winter, the timing isn’t good. They’ll tour in the summer – maybe. Because ultimately, this album is about fun. “I don't want to labour over any part of it. I think it's an amazing record and I'm so proud of it, I really believe in it. But at the same time, I'm only gonna do so much. If it starts feeling like too much, or too painful, I'm not gonna bleed over it. Can we just make it easy? And have a nice time? Show me that easy life.”

Photography: Holly Burgess

Hair & Makeup: Tallulah McLean

Styling: Sarah Murphy

LISTEN: Te Whakamiha is out Friday