THERE’S no doubt that with a second album comes a lot of pressure and for indie folk band The Paper Kites, the situation was no different.
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Comprised of Sam Bentley, Christina Lacy, David Powys, Josh Bentley and Sam Rasmussen, the band had a lot to live up to when creating its sophomore release.
“People talk about the second album being more nerve-wracking because people already have their expectations of what it’s going to sound like,” Lacy said.
To (somewhat) relieve the second-album pressure for the quintet, the band’s lead vocalist and songwriter Sam Bentley decided to go with a concept record.
“I think he thought it would be a cool idea to give the album a bit of a different focus rather than focussing it on being the second album,” Lacy said.
“He also wanted to challenge himself as a writer and was drawn to the idea.”
Entitled twelvefour, the new record is based around the theory that an artist's creative peak is between the hours of midnight and 4am.
According to Bentley himself, the inspiration for the record came from a passing comment.
“That idea turned into the heart of the project, so every night I'd sit down when the clock ticked over to midnight and just start writing,” he said.
For two months, Bentley worked, reversing his sleep patterns and penning thirty songs in his home studio.
“I got to the end and thought, I'm never doing that again. It was wild to write until you are so tired that nothing sounded too over-worked – songs didn't feel restricted by a commonly analytical brain.”
Determined to capture a bolder sound than their debut, the band travelled to Seattle to record with Grammy-nominated producer Phil Ek. The result was an album that has been described as lush and intimate. Lacy said the album sounded much more cohesive than the first.
“There are still different sounding songs but the sound is a lot more cohesive,” she said.
“It makes more sense to me. I feel like with the first album, we had a lot of songs we really loved and just wanted to get as many out as we could so it ended up being a 13-track album which is quite long to listen to. A lot of the songs got lost there.
“This album feels like a nice 10-track package and is cohesive, neater and precise. I’d say it’s a really good representation musically of how we’ve grown.”
Earlier this year, The Paper Kites dropped the endearing video clip for Electric Indigo, the first single taken from twelvefour.
Starring actress Laura Brent of The Chronicles Of Narnia fame, the video’s narrative focuses on a struggling writer who heads out for the night in search of various forms of inspiration.
Having already garnered the full support of triple j and a host of community radio stations around the country, Electric Indigo provided a taste of the new record.
The Paper Kites will perform at Theatre Royal, Castlemaine on October 22. For more information and tickets, visit www.theatreroyalcastlemaine.com.au