Fans who headed along to what they thought was a Birds Of Tokyo album listening party in Melbourne last night were treated to a surprise live performance by the band, secretly organised for Sol’s VEVO Go Shows series. Pedestrian caught up with guitarist Adam Spark to get the low down on last night’s intimate gig, their yet-to-be released new album and what Birds Of Tokyo plan on getting up to this summer.
How does an exclusive gig like last night’s VEVO Go Show differ from the larger tour shows that Birds of Tokyo usually play?
It was kind of cool last night, there wasn’t a pressure to put on a really big show, it was just sort of impromptu and very casual and cool. There wasn’t that expectance of something larger than life or really perfect, it was a bit dorky on our behalf actually.
What kind of reactions did you get to the new material? I believe you were playing some of it last night.
Yeah, we did. It was pretty cool, I mean you can only gauge that to certain degree. Half the time I’m concentrating on what I’m playing with this new stuff because it’s all still so new. We’re still learning how to play these songs live so it’s hard to be able to get up and have a look around. It’s very early still so I think we need to play a couple more shows, which we’re going to do this week, to give us a good idea of where things are at.
Did you approach the writing process this time round in the same way that’s been so successful for you guys in the past?
No, not really. There were a lot more fingers in the pie this time round, everyone in the band by and large were sort of throwing ideas around as we were exploring inital ideas. That’s not to say that all of those ideas made it in the end but we definitely went through a much bigger, longer filter this time with everyone having a little ‘yay and nay’ over things, which was quite cool. I think we made a much more conscious effort to approaching the culture of each song and why we were writing songs, whereas in the past, we tended to be a little bit lazier, we would sort of write some music and then slap some lyrics at the top of it and that’s a song. This time we sort of got a bit bored with being lazy about it all.
Tell us a bit about recording in Los Angeles. What was working with Dave Cooley and Tony Hoffer (who have worked with M83, Beck and Silversun Pickups) like?
It was really cool, everyone we worked with were really beautiful, really cool guys. It’s probably the most relaxed sessions we’ve ever done. We just kind of had fun with it. Before, there were always different pressures we would put on ourselves to finish because we’ve only got X amount of studio time or we weren’t sure what we were doing with the songs, whereas this time around we had a lot more confidence going into recording. It was literally a matter of just going in and doing our part without screwing it up rather than trying to find the voice and tone of a song in the studio, which is what we’ve kind of done in the past. It was cool, it was relaxed, it was fun, and the weather was beautiful!
What can we expect from the new album?
It’s really a summation of everything that we’re feeling really good about at the moment. We haven’t tried to write songs by design or for anything other than there were certain moods and feelings and conversations that we wanted to have. We didn’t really do it with a sense of what people expect from this band or what people like about us, we just always kind of do what we like. It’s just a really beautiful, warm and dreamy furthering of all the things that we like.
Do you know when it’s due to be released yet?
Well, I probably shouldn’t say because I’m not entirely sure what the date actually is. It should be out in the first third of next year though.
Lastly, what does this summer hold for Birds of Tokyo?
Funnily enough, this summer is a bit quiet for us. We’ve been out of action for almost over a year now and we didn’t want to sort of bunch everything into the last minute. We didn’t want to just go out all guns blazing without the record doing its thing, so summer’s actually going to be quiet. We’re preparing for basically a big year or year and a half of touring for this next record so there’s a lot of prep and live stuff building up and that’s the stuff that we’re going to be doing over the summer. Just hanging out in our studio and start rehearsing at the start of February for when we begin touring.
