Celebrate the first day of Te Marama Puoro o Aotearoa | NZ Music Month by listening to a new Vera Ellen album.
The Taite Music Prize-winning singer-songwriter’s latest record, Heaven Knows What Time, is out today via Flying Nun Records.
According to a press release, Heaven Knows What Time followed a period of “unconventionality” for Allen, during which she learned to “embrace the chaos that comes with being a self-sustained artist in today’s constantly driving culture.”
“Heaven Knows What Time is less about thinking and more about just being — embracing the masks we wear, but also allowing ourselves to take them off and bare it all; the exhausted, the messy, the fear, the adventure, and all of the joy too,” the press release adds.
Ellen wrote the album during a two-week songwriting residency in Greytown, awarded through the NZ Pacific Studio Artist Residency Programme.
The residency provided space and solitude away from touring and performance, culminating in a performance at Studio 73 for fellow residents and members of the local community.
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Heaven Knows What Time features lead single “Gayfever”, which was accompanied by an absurd music video helmed by Ellen’s ex-bandmate Jerry Ramirez, and “When It’s Over”, a collaboration with fellow Pōneke Wellington musician Hemi Hemingway.
There’s also new single “Walking in Vegas”, which Ellen describes as an “exploration of artifice in the entertainment industry. The many selves, the lack of self. Identity within identity without identity.”
It’s been three years since Ellen released her excellent album Ideal Home Noise, which featured in our 80 Best New Zealand Albums of the 2020s So Far list last year.
“If 2021’s It’s Your Birthday hinted at much to come, Ideal Home Noise was her confirmation. Born out of a troubled period of Vera’s life, her latest full-length record journeys between light and dark, hope and despair, the tracks anchored by lyrics that makes a listener feel less alone in facing their own battles,” we praised.
Ideal Home Noise won the coveted Taite Music Prize in 2024, and Ellen said she was “still in shock” when we caught up with her backstage immediately after her triumph.
“You know how you think that people will secretly know, and then they just act shocked? Like, no, I literally didn’t know… And then when it was my name called – I’m still really shocked, honestly,” she told us.
She followed that with a nomination for Best Alternative Artist at the 2025 Aotearoa Music Awards, following her win in the same category in 2022 for her album It’s My Birthday.
Following a 27-date jaunt around the UK and Europe supporting Aldous Harding, Ellen will return home to Aotearoa for a national tour in July (ticket information here).
Vera Ellen’s Heaven Knows What Time is out now via Flying Nun Records.
