JONATHAN BREE, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2023): The man in the irony mask

For someone once quite visible, Aucklander Jonathan Bree negotiated his way into high-profile international anonymity.

It's been quite a journey from a leaky flat in Kingsland to his 2023 album Pre-Code Hollywoodwith funk legend Nile Rodgers on two songs.

But along the way Bree – who was on album covers and in videos for his band the Brunettes in the first decade of the 2000s, appeared alongside Princess Chelsea in her clip for The Cigarette Duet which has had 90 million-plus hits on YouTube, and then into a solo career – removed himself.

On his solo albums and attendant videos since 2015's A Little Night Music Bree has been behind a face-covering veil in the manner of Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte's paintings The Lovers and The Heart of the Matter from almost a century ago.

Four years before the American television show The Masked Singer, singer/songwriter Bree became the masked singer.

With a head full of classic 60s pop, vocal influences from David Bowie, Scott Walker and the poised languor of European cabaret, Jonathan Bree has built an impressive and diverse catalogue which touches on sexuality, celebrity, ennui, isolation, disillusionment and . . .

And sometimes he's a romantic, this man behind the veil.

Jonathan Bree – also a producer, engineer and accomplished collaborator with Heather Mansfield in the Brunettes, Chelsea Nikkel aka Princess Chelsea and Britta Phillips of Luna – was “born and grew up in Auckland, and bounced around West Auckland state housing with my Mum until I was 13.

“Then I was in Australia for my teenage years”, he says . . .

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To read the rest of this article on Jonathan Bree go to audioculture.co.nz here

Audioculture is the self-described Noisy Library of New Zealand Music and is an ever-expanding archive of stories, scenes, artists, clips and music. Elsewhere is proud to have some small association with it. Check it out here.

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For reviews of Jonathan Bree's music at Elsewhere go here.