There's a commonly held belief in the pop music industry that an artist's second album is make-or-break time. The reasons for this are many, but the over-riding concern (unless, Elvis Costello-like, you can come up with half an album on the crapper), is that you've had your whole career up to that point to assemble the material for your first album. Then, perhaps only a year or so to come up with songs of suitably incandescent brilliance to match the first. It's the international law of diminishing returns, aka 'the sophomore slump', and only the truly gifted seem to be (at least partially) immune to it.

Drugs do not appear to help very much in this situation, although probably make the whole anguished process more bearable. The more successful or critically praise-worthy the first record, the more intense is the pressure to match it, often resulting in over-cooking the whole shebang to ghastly effect.

Sometimes too, wayward attempts to break new ground will leave established fans scratching their heads in bewilderment. Can anyone hum anything off Alanis Morissette's follow-up to the multi-platinum 'Jagged Little Pill'? Can anyone even remember what it was called?

Shayne Carter, and this will be no surprise to anyone familiar with his against-the-grain modus operandi, has totally turned this axiom on its head by finishing the follow-up to 2001's 'I Believe You Are A Star', another six-banger title - 'You've Got To Hear The Music', in well under half the time of its predecessor.

This is fortunate, because 'Star' really was a Herculean labour for Carter as he battled to master Pro Tools and its infinite overdubbing/manipulating potential, learn bass, production duties and secure a release.

Whole rafts of work were consigned to the waste-bin of cyberspace as he eventually realised that the computer was not going to write the songs for him in any sort of meaningful way.

So it's great to see the now 40ish Carter looking relaxed and happy with the fruits of his latest labours, the bulk of which was written during one golden month of creative outpouring. To put this in perspective, the admittedly brilliant Smoke single from 'Star' took fully four years from inception to completion.

Difficult follow-up album? Quite the opposite really. So then, was the radically reduced turnaround time a function of greater familiarity with his Pro Tools set up (which came as part of his advance from Sony on the first album)?

"Definitely, yeah." he agrees. "I did all the hard work on the last one, learnt everything I had to learn on the last one as far as the process went. But yeah, I just wanted to make this one really direct and organic sounding and I didn't want to use computer trickery.

"Every tune on this record was done basically click track, acoustic guitar and a vocal, and I built around it. I just thought that if the tunes worked in that elemental form, then they'd work any which way. I just tried to make it real easy for myself, because I recognised that you can make it really hard for yourself."

When I last interviewed Carter he mentioned that even after all the work he'd put into 'Star' there were still a few niggly things that he wanted to change, but the record company wouldn't let him. This may have had something to do with the fact that it had already been mastered! Carter is known as something of a perfectionist, so I ask if his latest creation went off for mastering in a niggle-free way.--BREAK---

"I am really happy. I've done everything I could think to do with the tunes. I think it's rawer and more stripped down this time, it's not as layered as the last one, and I deliberately made it a lot less complicated for myself when I was writing the tunes. It's really direct - there's only so much you can do with that kinda shit."

Another factor which probably contributed to this relatively smooth gestation was a much greater willingness to farm out musical contributions to other musicians. Indeed this is more in keeping with his original concept of Dimmer as a kind of umbrella banner under which a fluid line up of musicians could work, rather than the Shayne Carter Show that 'Star' became.

Quite an illustrious line-up of contributors it is too. Anyone who's heard the lean, sinuous funk of first single Getting What You Give will not have missed the Fat Freddy's Drop horns all over the intro (rather oddly they never re-appear in the song - sooo Shayne P. Carter), while golden-tonsilled diva Anika Moa contributes backing vocals on nearly half the tracks. One track even finds our two pre-eminent pop princesses panned left (Moa) and right (Bic Runga). Now you can call me churlish, but that strikes me as just plain greedy.

Audio engineering wizard Nick Roughan has again made his presence felt on the sonic side of things. Andy Morton contributes some very tasty keyboards while Carter has also delegated some of the bass duties to Pluto's Mike Hall. Regular drummer Gary Sullivan, responsible for the beautiful computer animated clips for Seed and Getting What You Give, is now based in Sydney but still in evidence on the album, augmented with new live sticksman Willy Scott.

Carter even handed over some of the guitar duties to new Dimmer regular Ned Ngatai, proving beyond doubt that he checked his ego at the door when he set out to make this record. If it made the songs better, if it made things easier rather than harder, then it was in.

One of the more interesting collaborations was with fellow home-recording ace Sean Donnelly, better known by his SJD handle, and a man who shares Carter's taste for creating intelligently noir-ish audio. Carter says of Donnelly, "I really wanted to work with him because I really rate him - a very talented man."

The fact that we're sitting in the boardroom of Festival Mushroom Records invites the next question, because the last time we spoke was at Sony Music on the occasion of the release of 'I Believe You Are A Star'. What's the dirt there, Shayne?

"I'll tell you afterwards..." he deadpans conspiratorially, then bursts out laughing. "Sony - I don't know, I just don't think they were into that last record I gave them and I was perfectly happy with it, I thought it was a really good record. I really enjoyed working with Malcolm (Black, Sony's A&R honcho) and full respect to that guy, he was great to work with through the whole thing.

"But they wanted to see the sales figures up on the board and they wanted the commercial airplay and all that kind of stuff, and it didn't really happen. It still sold respectably, it's nearly gold, but I think the main thing was we didn't get an overseas release for it, and that's what we always banked on."

As for why the album never got away beyond these shores, well, you could point out a number of reasons, including September 11, a shift towards conservatism in the international marketplace, the fact, as Shayne freely admits, that many an A&R person will have listened to bits of two tracks and thought "Weirdo shit from New Zealand, next..."

Sony NZ's A&R man Malcolm Black, who created the marriage, agrees that local sales were reasonable and it was more the lack of international pick up which led Sony to release Carter after that first album.

"We tried very hard to get it released internationally through our Sony affiliates, with the common response being '... there are no radio singles'. We then tried very hard to get various indie labels to pick it up (over 200 packs were sent out). The typical response from them was 'We love this record, it's on high rotate in our office, but... we're not sure how we could be able to work it'."

This was a disappointment to Black, who admits further that it was a learning experience for him. "I had thought that if the record was strong enough, in terms of its artistry, then we would succeed with it."

It is reasonable to ask whether the challenging Dimmer and the easy-pop loving Sony (or rather the independent Shayne Carter and corporate Sony), were ever going to be a good fit. Black acknowledges that it was a 'square peg in a round hole' situation and that it is his job to ensure that the acts fit the label. Sony, he says, spent a lot of money on the album, losing most of it, but Carter himself gained a local fan-base and home studio.

A little bloodied perhaps, but un-bowed, Carter sounds more determined than ever to get this one away. "I just really want to get an international release. I'm not making music to sell tens of thousands of records in New Zealand and be the Channel Z guy. No disrespect to Channel Z, but no I'm not man! It's not really that kind of music."

For their part, FMR are conservatively saying that they expect this album to perform at least as well as the first in the local market, with hopes of achieving greater success in Australia.

MD Mark Ashbridge says that they plan a sustained six-to-nine month approach in NZ, with a series of marketing phases rather than a hard out one time campaign.

"Having him with FMR and back closer to the Flying Nun fold is obviously a good thing. The first Dimmer album was great and we think we have a fantastic album to work with this time. FMR Australia is currently busy working Scribe, Carly (Binding) and The Mint Chicks for us so we haven't serviced them with 'You've Got To Hear The Music' yet, we'll focus on it mid year."

Apart from Australia with FMR no international rights have been assigned for the new album. Carter has some useful contacts in the U.S. and Europe from his Straitjacket Fits days, including former Flying Nun boss Paul McKessar, now based in London and a faithful Carter lieutenant, so who knows? Why not? The music certainly warrants at least a fighting chance in the international arena. Carter knows this, which probably contributes to his getting a little heated on this particular topic.

"I don't know, fuck man, I just make the fuckin' records and they've gotta feel good. I've done it long enough bro', to understand that. The only barometer is if you feel good about it, eh? You can't sit there and imagine this imaginary demographic of a hundred thousand people, that whole thing where you try guessing what other people will like - that's when you're fucked."

"'Will people like this, is that right?' Man you know when it's right, you know it's right when you're standing in the practice room and you're playing those chords and singing that melody, no-one can touch that because it is right. I see it time and time again where people get derailed or distracted by all those other considerations, and you hear it in the music."

While Carter is clearly happy to delegate some of the musical aspects these days, he still likes to keep a fairly tight reign on the other creative aspects of the Dimmer project, particularly videos.

"In the past I've had videos go out that I'm kind of embarrassed by. All the Dimmer stuff we've done, all the videos we've done ourselves - Gary's either animated them or I've conceptualised them and co-directed them, and I've really enjoyed it as well. Plus they fit in with the music.

"If there's anyone who should know what the intent of the song is and what the interpretation of it should be it's the musicians, so I've really taken responsibility for that. It's all coming out under your umbrella and it's what people see as being representative of your band or your project. And it doesn't have to be a drag, it can actually be really exciting and a really creative thing to do. It's just another aspect of what you do, especially these days where video is so much part and parcel of getting across to the public."

"It's kind'a like soundbites to me, and so many of my favourite records are albums and they're very personal things. I don't need some video director to fill in the gaps for me - being spelt out with the visuals 'This is what it should suggest to you'."

Throughout both Carter's post-Straitjackets albums there is, for want of a better phrase, a soul thread that was never apparent in any of his previous work. Little stabs of funky guitar here, bubbling Wurlitzer piano or organ there, and more obviously the horn section on the new single. It got me thinking that this soul thing may have been there all along, lying dormant like some masked gene that kicks into life when the right enzyme comes to town. It seems I'm not too far off the mark there.

"I think growing up in Dunedin, that's quite a white Presbyterian rock'n'roll scene, so a lot of my influences were shaped in that scene. But I've lived in Auckland for the last 12 years now, so I think that whole 'black' music vibe has seeped through a lot more. You know, I've always loved stuff like James Brown and Sly (Stone), I've always listened to that kind of stuff.

"So many different musics are interconnected - I listen to James Brown and I get the same kind of kick as I do listening to Can - that whole German take on hypnotic, repetitive music - to me it's all related and I join up all the dots."

As long as Shayne Carter keeps joining up his musical dots as uniquely and beautifully as he has on 'You've Got To Hear The Music', he could just keep hurdling the sophomore slump indefinitely.