They’re the headlining Australian presence at next weekend’s Coaster Festival in Gosford, so we felt it only necessary to have a chat with Birds of Tokyo before they set off on their next grand adventure. So a week or so ago, as he was sitting at home in Perth, Larry Heath chatted with drummer Adam Weston about the new (self-titled) album, 3D videos, upcoming tours, their good friends Midnight Youth, and mini amps!
Looking purely at location, Coaster isn’t your typical festival is it?
Yeah, it makes for a bit of a change for us – we’ve only played a handful of what you’d call “regional” festivals. I mean it’s not like you’d say Gosford was miles away from Sydney or anything – but it is good to have them outside the capital cities. It’s on bloody grand final day though! Every grand final for the last three years we’ve had a show, so it means that I can’t get blind drunk at lunchtime!
Is this going to be a taste of what’d to come over the Summer? Are we going to see you out and about at some of the festivals come that season?
I’m really looking forward to the Australian Summer this year, because we spent the majority of it last year in Sweden, where it was minus 15 degrees every day. I say we’ll all be soaking up a few rays, and maybe playing a handful of festivals, too. But more importantly, it’s a chance to showcase some of the new material off the latest record, which we really haven’t had a chance to do yet.
How have you found audiences to react to the new material so far, live?
Pretty good, luckily for us! Or something would be going terribly wrong for us. But we’ve only really played a handful of the new songs – maybe about 3 or 4. And they’ve only really been at overseas showcases or just briefly on the last tour, which was in support of The Saddest Thing I Know. But considering with Coaster and an album tour coming out, that gives us a bit of breathing space to play some of the new stuff.
What can we expect from the Coaster set? A good mix of new and old?
Yeah, I’m usually a fan of bands that don’t saturate their set with entirely new material – you sort of get a bit dumbfounded by it if you’re unfamiliar with it. I’d say that we’ll always going to put some thought into pairing the new material with the older stuff. I guess when I say older, it’s barely a couple of years, with most of it. With festivals we certainly try to keep the sets upbeat, saving the brooding “albumy” tracks for our own club or theatre shows.
Back in May and June you did a tour with Midnight Youth – can you talk a little bit about those guys? They’re setting Australia on fire at the moment!
Yeah they were a bunch of fun to play with. And we really wanted them on the run. Because we were digging their release and what they do. And it was something different for us, too. Every night we made sure we watched them, and the crowd responded really well to them. I definitely think they’re on the right path. I look forward to seeing them again.
Yeah I caught them the other day for the first time.
Did you notice if they were using these little orange amps? They’re four times smaller than your standard. So wher ethe rest of us have to rely on hire gear from endorsements, because it’s way too heavy to fly them around everywhere, they were taking these things around as hand luggage. They only weighed about 6 or 7 kilos but sounded amazing! So you’ve just reminded me that I need to get in touch with them, and try to buy one or two of them myself.
Certainly sounds like the easier way to travel.
Yeah .Travelling is a pain in the arse at the best of times.
What would you say ARE the hardest parts about travelling around Australia when on tour?
I guess it depends on the nature of the band and the tour. In the past, when we’ve all piled into the Turago and hit the road and done the 30 shows in 40 days, that can get a little tiring from town to town. But nothing we’d complain about. But it’s a different ball game when we’ve got 3 or 4 shows in a row, coming up on the next tour, where it’s just flight and city, flight and city… and it doesn’t really leave a lot of time to rejuvenate. But once again, it’s part of the plan, and it’s all rock and roll.
And the next tour Silversun Pickups are joining you!
Yeah and it’s good to see they’re on Coaster as well. Another band playing Coaster that everyone needs to check out are called The Chemist, they’re from Perth. They just put out an EP a few months back. I’d say everyone will be seeing a lot more of them.
And speaking of Perth, I had my first experience over there earlier this year covering the WAMis, and was really blown away by the level and variety of talent there. What does the Perth scene mean to Birds of Tokyo?
Birds started out just like every other band in Perth, booking our own shows, and playing to 10 or 12 people down at a dirty sticky carpeted pub. I do believe the bands in Perth work really hard, as they do everywhere else in the country. But with only a handful of venues to play at, people really concentrate on cutting their teeth, not looking too far into the whole hype sort of thing, or a rule book to make it. It all just starts with a good set of songs, and hard work and determination. And every now and again Triple J gets behind one of these acts and they tend to break through and start hitting the national circuit.
And you’ve won plenty of WAMis over the years… do they mean a lot to you?
Yeah of course. It was never something we were striving to achieve, but it’s a very nice nod of the head when these things do pop up. We’re very aware of the support that we’ve had, and the interest from where it all started, here in Perth.
I caught this morning for the first time the “3D Version” of “The Saddest Thing I Know” – I had no idea this existed! What brought this on?
Well it was pretty much the director’s idea. When the option was there, we were looking to do something different, not set trends in the video world or anything, they were saying these particular cameras they wanted to shoot with, not many had touched on before, and to be able to do it in a different format, we said sure, why not. And as we started to get a feel for how it was coming together, it just looked amazing. We shot it in LA in front of this 60 metre green screen, and we weren’t sure how it was going to turn out. So when the proofs started coming through from Post Production, we were blown away with the imagery – the very neon aspect of it all. It really does jump out at you when you put the 3D glasses on.
Is it difficult, the whole green screen thing?
It’s more that you feel kind of uncomfortable, playing fake drums and guitars that aren’t plugged in… but it all makes sense in the end.
And how come you shot it in at the Laurel Canyon Stages in LA?
Just like everything we do, it came down to timelines, and deadlines. Because we were all in LA at the time, we thought “wow, we only have this small window of oppertunity to get this first video done – and to get it out there in time”. So even if we’d wanted to do it back home, we wouldn’t have had time. And the same goes for just about every clip we’ve done. It’s all part of the promo schedule which unfortunately there’s never much freedom or leeway to work with.
You have had a bit of experience playing shows in the States – how does it all compare over there? I know you played SXSW in 2009, for one…
Well to be honest, with the States, until now they have really only been showcasey sort of events. So we can’t really focus on that too much. But just to get really positive feedback really encourages us to go back and hit these territories when we feel the timing’s right. It’s not like we want to drop everything and forfeit anything that we’ve built here in Australia, or elsewhere, just to crack some other market. But earlier this year, because we were in Sweden, it was easy for us to nick over to London and play a couple of showcases, and then tour 3 or 4 months later – play our own headline shows. Fortunately for us they sold out and went really well! It’s all in the pipeline to hit these countries again.
And finally, the question I ask all the drummers I interview – what’s your favourite percussion instrument?
Wow. I would have to say, I get really addicted to anything with tambourine. And I do play in another band, Sons of Rico, where one of the main writers in the group always seems to incorporate some “tambo”, so I’ve now got a bit of a role just sitting there playing the tambourine. So maybe I’ll have to bring that over to Birds and see if I can get that happening!
Don’t miss Birds of Tokyo when they play Gosford’s Coaster Festival on September 25th. Tickets are on sale now! They have plenty of other shows happening around the country, too, so check out their Myspace page for all the details: http://www.myspace.com/birdsoftokyo
