After 15 years together, The Paper Kites are still finding new ways to let their songs breathe. This past year took the Melbourne five-piece farther than ever before, from first-ever shows in India to festival stages across Europe and North America, all while quietly finishing a new album shaped by space, patience, and trust. Written largely on a friend’s farm in Victoria’s Yarra Valley and recorded with a renewed focus on just the core lineup, the new record feels less like a reinvention than a reaffirmation. In this conversation with Hit Parader, guitarist David Powys reflects on a year of movement, the power of restraint, and why, even now, there’s still something a little magical about just the five of them in a room together.
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN HIT PARADER #3 (HERE)
HP: Tell me about your year so far.
David: We’ve been touring a bunch. We had our first tour in a new part of Asia earlier in the year. Our first time in India, which is really exciting. We did a short tour in Asia. Thailand and the Philippines. Then we’ve done a few other tours. We toured with Stephen Sanchez in North America, and we also just came home a few weeks ago from a tour where we did some dates with The Teskey Brothers and did a few festivals like Bourbon and Beyond, and we also did a few headline shows through that run as well. But most importantly, we finished recording, mixing, and mastering for the new album. It’s going to be out in January. So it’s been a pretty mixed bag this year. Next year it will be back to regular programming with headline touring. It’s been nice to mix it up and do a whole bunch of different things.
HP: It’s got to be cool to see your music connecting with so many people across the globe. Has there been a stop on any tours recently or in the past where the crowd reaction has really just shocked you in terms of how involved it is?
D: Yeah, I mean, being in India was pretty special, being somewhere we’ve never been before, working with promoters for the first time over there. Seeing the global reach of music from an Australian band, I mean, for anyone, is pretty interesting. I think it’s all thanks to, I guess, the globalization of the streaming industry and the accessibility to music and art. It’s given us at least a way to connect with fans all over the place. The other standout for us was the mid-year tour we did. It was just a short tour, a few festivals, and a few headlines, and that saw us in Canada, mostly doing some summer festivals and folk festivals. Then we also flew over to the UK and Europe for a couple of shows. So in our winter, their summer, we played at Somerset House in London. That was on the 16th of July and was a real standout for us. London is one of those cities that constantly surprises us with support. So playing at Somerset House was a huge court surrounded by these old buildings, and it’s an Outdoor Show. So to fill that space was really special, and that felt quite momentous for us.
HP: The majority of the record was written on your friend’s farm in the Yarra Valley. Did the space and isolation influence the tone, lyrics, or songs on the new record?
D: I think so. We’ve released three songs from the album already. “When The Lavender Blooms” was first. Even that song/title paints the picture of the area of Victoria. The video for that was filmed at the farm as well. A lot of the visuals, aesthetics, and even some song titles/content lean pretty heavily on that area. The farm where we rehearse has a lot of open space outside the building. So we rehearse in an old shed. We’ve set up in the storage area of the big shed. It’s quite a big space. It’s pretty rustic and dusty. We’ve been rehearsing and writing there for some time now. It came through on Roadhouse. We wrote a lot of that music there as well. We didn’t go away or seclude ourselves from our families for this album. We were writing and recording this album in parallel with our daily lives. The album really feels like a part of us. I would say the farm definitely reflects how the songs were arranged and written. It does get pretty cold in the winter, but a lot of writing was done in the warmer months early in the year. It came together really, really naturally. It reflects a lot of us as people and as a band who’ve been playing together for 15 years.
HP: All of this was with the roots of the five-piece band, which you guys stripped back and described as a coming home of sorts in a past interview. How did that shift the dynamic in songwriting or the studio sessions as a whole?
D: Off the back of At the Roadhouse, we had three extra players join the band, who became The Paper Kites and the Roadhouse band for almost two years. Both rehearsals, recording, and subsequent touring for that record, we became an eight-piece band, which was really fun. We all learned to lean on and leave space for each other in that way. Coming back to playing as five felt really naked at first. We all felt really exposed. So we had to learn to fill the space a little bit more and bring more of ourselves into the songwriting space. It took a little bit of getting used to after two years of tour and an eight-piece. It felt a lot easier to take a breath. There’s more space to explore, and it was really to get back in touch with that part of ourselves as a five-piece. Being able to fill those spaces ourselves and believe again that we can do that as a five-piece. There was almost a feeling of like, “Well, are we going to be able to do this just the five of us again?” We enjoyed playing as an eight-piece so much. It got a little bit of it. It took a little bit of getting used to. Once we started arranging the songs, a song like “Shake Off the Rain” was a really good example of that. It’s really quite bare-bones, and that comes down to songwriting. You can make a song sound good with barely anything if you have to. That’s probably my favorite song off of the record. It feels like a really clear reflection of just the five of us playing a good song together. Everyone adds a bit of their own secret sauce, and it came out really nice.
HP:You stated in another interview, “When i listened to the album, it felt like an honest reflection of who we are as people and as musicians. Is there a track on this record that you think best encapsulates a specific time period for you guys?
D: When I say it’s an honest reflection of who we are as a band right now, of course, that includes where we’ve been and the experiences we shared. What I like about this album is that it shows the light and shade of what we do as a band. Both in the sunnier tunes and the darker or moodier songs as well. There’s a really nice balance of light and shade on this album. There are a few things we tried for the first time, like “Deep (In the Plans We Made).” That is just Sam, Christina, and me with one guitar singing live around a microphone. That’s something we do a lot at our live shows. We’ve done it tons of times over the years, but we’ve never recorded a track for an album like that. It was kind of scary, but it felt like the only way to do that song correctly. That track is a landmark moment for us. It shows all the imperfections of our voices and our timing, but also captures a specific moment in time where we all were in one room and sang together like that. We can never recreate that, even if we tried. I mean, we’ll give it our best shot at the live shows. There were a few moments on the album that felt like it’s just the five of us playing live in one room. That’s something we wouldn’t have done in the early days — way more overdubs. This is the first time we’ve tried a lot of things and really believed that, “Hey, let’s just do this; we can do this.” We’ve been doing it a long time and just backing ourselves to give it a go. A lot of the songs are not the 10th or 11th take. It’s a third or fourth take. We’ll do five, six, maybe seven takes, but we’ll always come back to the third or fourth, where the magic happened. That was really satisfying to be a part of that and be reminded that “Okay, just the five of us.” It feels like, after 15 years, there’s still a lot of magic that happens in the studio together. I think we are all satisfied with how that sounds in each of the songs.
HP: If a fan were to just discover your music with the new record, what song would you want them to hear first, and why?
D: I want to say, “Shake Off the Rain.” It’s the third single. It’s my favorite, so I’m kind of biased, but I think that song had both light and shade within it. For me, it’s the melody. I think Sam’s melody is so beautiful in that song. In some ways, it’s a little bit of new ground for us, but it’s also the classic part, melody and harmony, that we’ve always done really well. I think the other one would probably be that people tend to like our sad songs. So, generally, if someone is being introduced to our band, it’s usually a sad song that they hear first. I think “Strongly in Your Arms” is a pretty good flag bearer for us as well. That’s got banjo in that as well and some folk arrangements. Some of those early acoustic and folk tunes are still doing well for our fans.
