Birds fly home for WA Day gig
Birds of Tokyo’s headlining slot on the State of the Art festival tomorrow will be the rockers’ first hometown gig in two years.
Drummer Adam Weston says the prodigal sons want to mark the WA Day long weekend celebration with a home-grown cover.
The 34-year-old is thinking of local bands, such as Jebediah, Ammonia and Valvolux, he grew up seeing at all-ages gig before the all-consuming Birds formed in 2004.
Weston decides he’d love to tackle 90s funk-punk trio Beaverloop’s sub-two minute classic Bad Acid ... Jazz, a choice that would stand out amongst Birds of Tokyo’s increasingly polished pop-rock.
Now scattered along the east coast, the quintet recently released the Anchor EP, a four-track snapshot of their time living, writing and recording in a “really nice” house in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Eagle Rock.
Birds of Tokyo also recorded their chart-topping 2013 opus March Fires in LA. The fourth album spawned hit single Lanterns, which got serious traction in the US meaning the band members were often trying to create new material while still promoting the old stuff.
Weston explains that this dichotomy pushed the Birds to seek sounds outside the nest of previous work.
“Anything that felt like it was ‘too Birds’ really wasn’t worth entertaining,” the drummer says from his adopted home of Brisbane. “With the process of promoting all the March Fires stuff, the further we could get away from that the better.”
The EP explores two distinct directions. Firstly, the title track and single Anchor and Puzzles are smooth yet brooding synth-pop moments, featuring Melbourne-based singer Ian Kenny’s falsetto. Both are ready-made for radio. Meanwhile, Weight of the World and Touch the Screen incorporate de rigueur electronic production.
Weston says the release is not a harbinger of the follow-up to March Fires.
“I think the EP is a reflection of those LA times of sitting around with acoustics and a piano in a lounge room and getting core ideas together, putting them on computers and then programming beats instead of flicking on the Marshall stacks and crunching things out.
“It was very much a studio effort,” he continues. “We’ve never played any of these songs live before.”
After a gig in Darwin last Saturday, State of the Art will be only the second outing for the new material.
Weston says that Birds of Tokyo moved to the States with every intention of making LA their home: “It wasn’t a temporary thing.”
The decampment bore fruit until cabin fever and homesickness put too much pressure on the five-piece.
“We did have a lot of songs and a large body of work that was taking shape, but in order to finish that over there I think we would’ve been at each other’s throats,” Weston says.
“It just wasn’t feeling right, hence the decision to focus in on a small amount of songs and an EP … That was a bit of a weight off our shoulders about doing an EP and not burdening ourselves with an album.”
The five Birds returned to Australia before Christmas last year and are now recording material that should find its way to an album likely to lob next year. The band has also returned to their rock sound.
“The stuff that we’re doing at the moment, there’s been a lot more guitars and going back to some raggedy acoustics,” Weston reveals.
While they’ve laid down at least one song with producer Scott Horscroft, who worked on their self-titled third album released in 2010, Weston has not ruled out a return to the City of Angels.
“Portions of this new material feel like they’re heading back to an LA vibe,” he says. “I can’t see anyone going back there for six or 12 months at a time just for the sake of it … but you never know.
“Wherever opportunity comes knocking, you’d be silly not to follow it.”
Birds of Tokyo headlineState of the Art at the Perth Cultural Centre on May 30. Tickets from sotafest.com.au.Anchor EP is out now.
