Track By Track: Hemi Hemingway's New Album 'Wings Of Desire'

Sounding cool and confident, yet overflowing with passion and trepidatious about the future, Aotearoa songwriter Shaun Blackwell (Waitaha, Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Mutunga) aka Hemi Hemingway's new album Wings of Desire has arrived. Soon jetting overseas to play at UK's The Great Escape festival and SXSW in Austin, Hemingway graced Tāmaki Makaurau's Flying Out with an in-store performance last night, and will be back in town with band next Friday for an official release party at Neck Of The Woods.

Hemi Hemingway generously opened up about every single song on his knockout new romantic opus, recorded with producer James Goldsmith and featuring guests Vera Ellen and Georgia Gets By, plus a cast of instrumental and backing vocal contributors. Read his personal and frank reflections accompanying each track below — note the trigger warning for '6th April '13' — nab a copy of Wings of Desire on vinyl LP via PNKSLM Recordings from good record stores, and don't miss Hemingway before he takes flight...

Hemi Hemingway 'Wings of Desire' Album Launch Party
with Roy Irwin, Big Sur 
Friday 27th February - Neck of the Woods, Auckland
Tickets on sale HERE via UTR

Wings of Desire

When I wrote Wings of Desire, after an extended period of heightened anxiety and depression, I’d grown tired of feeling unwanted, unused, unrealised. However self-inflicted these feelings might have been, I felt about ready to burst. I wished to relive that constant ache of early-20s longing with self-conscious uncertainty, return to that delirium of potential love, when the risk was so high that tragedy lurked around every corner. I longed for that push and pull between excitement and heartache, to be inspired by the never knowing.

I just wanted to feel alive again, on the wings of desire.

This City’s Tryna Break My Heart

I wrote this track around 8 months after the breakup of a long-term relationship. Somebody new was interested in me, and I was aware of it. But I was also dubious, guarded and nervous to reciprocate feelings. I was concerned that I had barely begun my grieving journey from my last relationship, and this attention was stirring up a lot of silt, so to speak. I was trying to figure out just what I could give to this person, when all of a sudden my phone stopped lighting up.

Desiree

Desiree was me putting a name to the feeling of desire (clever, see?). It was one of the later songs I wrote for the album, and it made me realise that a lot of my album was about finding myself again, and about feeling desire and desirable again. I was thinking of how easily we fell in love as kids; at a waterpark on a summer holiday, infatuated with a new friend for a day. It’s brief but all-consuming. It’s clumsy but intoxicating. It’s chlorine and ice-blocks, begging your parents to stay for just a few more minutes.

Promises (feat. Georgia Gets By)

This song was written directly after a break up. It was me leaning fully into the grief and drama. It was a letting go after so long of two people struggling to hold this living, breathing relationship together. I couldn’t imagine my life without this love I had for this other person (which I still carry now, just differently), and I was really scared to embark upon a life without them. I guess it was also a promise to both of us to move through the next phase of my life with the wellbeing of our new relationship in mind.

Georgia told me that when she heard it she knew she wanted to be a part of it because it was so indulgent and dramatic.

(To Be) Without You

With (To Be) Without You I was thinking a lot about a trip I took to Greece in late 2022. In hindsight, there were signs that my life was really about to change; I was moving back to New Zealand, and I didn’t know what my future looked like. When I was writing this song the energy of it reminded me of Greece — especially Athens; the heat on the stone at night, the dark and empty alleys, beautiful people moving everywhere and lots of exposed skin. There was a mysterious timelessness to the city; it felt like a place that knows everything about you the moment you step foot there. I was carrying a hidden sadness while I was there, and it knew.

(To Be) Without You captures my worried mind and a feeling of longing to have that place and that time back again, to do things differently, but to have to instead make peace with my choices.

6th April ‘13

TRIGGER WARNING: sexual assault (skip to 07 if you don’t want to read this)

6th April 2013 is the date that I was assaulted by a man that I trusted. I moved to the UK a year later, in what I came to realise was partly an attempt to outrun the reality of that event. It took me many years, but when I was moving back to New Zealand in 2022 I realised that I was finally ready to confront my trauma. Over a decade’s worth of growth had made me realise how small his life had become, how limited his time was, and how he must’ve always known that his secret would come to light sooner or later. People like him see young people shining with possibility and demand access to them, and they try to take pieces of those shiny people and keep them for themselves. Writing this song helped me to feel empowered to come forward, whenever I may choose to.

Long Distance Lover

On a slightly lighter note, Long Distance Lover came about when an ex-partner and I were experiencing a little turmoil due to mutual emotional distance (we were still together at the time). It was frustrating more than anything, because it was essentially based on misunderstandings, but these misunderstandings were igniting each of our own trauma responses, which did little to compliment each other. I wanted to write a more light-hearted song to express the unluckiness of it, but to also play on the double-meaning of "distance". Long Distance Lover was a way of letting someone know that even while there may be some distance, you’re still trying to find ways to connect with them and to appreciate them, still thinking of them.

If Love Is A Winter’s Day

I wrote this song about recontextualising a mutual love a year or so after our long-term relationship ended. It’s important to me to try to maintain friendships when a relationship ends (however difficult the process may be), and this song came about after a break in the clouds, which felt like the signal of a new dawn, if you will. Where Promises (Track 4) was leaning into the drama, If Love Is A Winter’s Day is acknowledging the growth and developments that a love has taken post-relationship. It thinks of romantic love as the loud, intense & thunderous parts of a day, but seeks to acknowledge that once the sun goes down the day isn’t yet over; we can settle into a softer, more comfortable phase of our love for each other. Just because the brightest-burning part of a relationship is over, doesn’t mean that the quiet embering of a close friendship isn’t equally rewarding.

Oh, My Albertine (feat. Vera Ellen)

Oh, My Albertine was written after reading 'Astragal' by Albertine Sarrazin. The story spoke of a young woman breaking out of prison to rejoin her love, desperate to flee and start a new life for her and her young partner. It spoke of her frustration as she was holed up, waiting for her leg to heal (which she broke escaping from prison) and avoiding recapture, while her boyfriend was working long hours to save money for their new life. I read it at a time when I myself was feeling quite lonely and frustrated, waiting for the future to happen to me, in a bed of grief that never quite seemed like it would ease. I sent it to Vera and we talked about her harnessing Jonnine Standish (à la I Know A Girl Called Jonny by Rowland S. Howard), but what she brought far exceeded what I could have ever envisioned.

No Future No Future No Future

Perhaps my most overtly political song, No Future No Future No Future was written around the time that the three-headed taniwha was attempting to do away with Te Tiriti, stripping away even more basic rights for Māori people in our own country. Without getting too carried away, this government is racist af (shock horror!). Māori have been told our whole lives to blend in, to not rock the boat, to be thankful for the scraps we’ve been thrown (and to definitely not mention the fortunes that were taken by force from our ancestors). But Māori existence in NZ is like trying to survive off crumbs. So No Future (x3) is an acknowledgement of how bad it already is, and how, if pushed, we’ll have no choice but to burn the whole system to the ground.

'Wings of Desire' is out today via PNKSLM Recordings.