They’ve just come back from a sold-out headlining tour of America and Canada, and along the way The Paper Kites have learned a thing or two about performing and making music.
“We didn’t really know what was going on, how the crowd was going to perceive us or how they were going to respond to what we were playing,” says drummer Josh Bentley. “But as we went on, crowds were just loving it… we really vibed off that and started picking up our performance.”
The Melbourne five-piece released their album ‘States’ in February last year, and will be taking a victory lap around Australia this month. “I'm going to enjoy this next tour. I'm going to really lap it up for all it's worth and just live in the moment. Too often we look towards the next thing and then the next tour and not concentrate on what's happening now as a band.”
Bentley speaks of the indie folk group’s feelings prior to the release of ‘States’: “We were a little bit nervous at the start about putting it out. We had a lot of people in our corner like, 'It's great, just trust yourselves, trust the music you've been making and hopefully people will follow suit'. We were lucky enough that people did.”
“From the get go, we always knew that this album was going to be different… we wanted it to be different. We wanted to push the boundaries a bit musically… to test ourselves. We wanted to see if we could produce a different sound and work in a different direction while still under the Paper Kites banner. I think we've done it quite well. There's a real mix of different songs on there.”
Despite the success of ‘States’, Bentley remains humble. “It's still kind of that surreal feeling to have an album out in a record store, or iTunes and shops around the country and even world wide. It's ridiculous. We're very fortunate and lucky how it all panned out.”
Lead singer (and Josh's cousin) Sam Bentley wrote a large number of the songs on the record. According to Josh, there was an extensive catalogue to choose from for the album. “Sam is a tremendous and ridiculous song writer and he went away for, I think, a week or two weeks with a guitar and all the gear to record some songs and came back with about twenty to thirty odd tracks. Ater that we had a very extensive band meeting about culling, listening and deciding on what we wanted the album to look like, what sort of music direction we'd take on this new album.
“It was a long process, but it was good that we were all involved. Some bands only have five songs to make an album out of, but we were fortunate enough to have the opposite problem.”
The Paper Kites turned to friend and producer Wayne Connolly to assist them in the production of the album, much like they did for their 2012 release ‘Young North’. “Connolly came down and assisted in the productions, controlled the desk and guided us in our sound and what we were wanting from the album,” says Bentley.
‘States’ has gained and held the attention of fans globally, a feat that The Paper Kites are appreciative of. “We're very proud of what we've put forward in the album. We're proud of the production, we're proud of the music, the lyrics, every aspect of it we are very proud of, and we're grateful that we've been able to put it out there. It's getting great reviews, so we're really stoked about that and people are really enjoying it.”
As far as what's on the horizon for the group, Bentley discloses future plans for a video clip for ‘A Lesson From Mr Gray’ are in the pipeline. “We’re still trying to work out a few things. We're thinking of possibly putting ourselves in this new video clip. Sort of like a performance video clip, so this might be very different to what people are used to [from us]. But that's not definite, that may change, so I don’t want to give away too much. We love being involved in our video clips and we love taking an artistic direction, giving the director ideas or filtering in what we want of the video to them.”
Lately, the schedule of the folk group has consisted of perfecting their performances in time for their Australian tour. “We've just been hitting the rehearsal rooms recently trying to knot out our set list and what we want it to look like, what it's going to feel like. We're also talking about production and different ways to amp up our production on stage with new lighting and sound... different looks.
“We normally play the songs as [close as we can] to the recording, but there's times when you want to branch out a bit and add musical interludes and do different things on tour to make it different from the album, so we try to test ourselves when it comes to touring. We try to put songs together, we join them together and make one big song, or just try different things on the road that you wouldn’t normally try in a studio. I think it's great that we have the ability to do that as well.”
Written by Lexi McKee
The Paper Kites play the following dates:
Thu May 29 — The Cambridge (Newcastle)
Fri May 30 — Enmore Theatre (Sydney) (All Ages)
Sat May 31 — Transit Bar (Canberra)
Sun Jun 01 — Heritage Hotel (Woollongong)
Sat Jun 07 — The Darwin Railway Club
Fri Jun 13 — The Northern (Byron Bay)
Sat Jun 14 — The Hi-Fi (Brisbane)
Thu Jun 19 — Artbar @ Art Gallery of Western Australia (Perth)
Fri Jun 20 — The Prince Of Wales (Bunbury)
Sat Jun 21 — The Gov (All Ages) (Adelaide)
Fri Jun 27 — The Athenaeum Theatre (All Ages) (Melbourne)
