The Paper Kites: Personal Music With Worldwide Reach

What do The Paper Kites have in common with Silverchair, Sia, INXS, Midnight Oil, Flume, AC/DC and Kylie Minogue? All of the aforementioned Australian acts have released Gold-certified singles in the US, with Bloom by The Paper Kites recently joining this list of legends. "It's pretty cool," the band's frontman Sam Bentley concurs before admitting, "I think we'd kind of like forgotten to keep track of how it went; apparently it'd gone Gold a while ago, actually. None of us knew about it [laughs]. It's such an old song for us, but it kinda still keeps popping up in very big ways and, you know, I have friends that have been travelling in, like, Third World countries and they'll be at some dingy bar and the guy in the bar's playing the song! It's one of those things where the spread that it's been able to get is amazing."

When asked what he what attributes Bloom's success to, Bentley ponders, "I mean, for me, as a writer, I certainly don't think it's the best song that I've ever written but, yeah! I think it's just word of mouth and people sharing it, and people seem to get something out of it. And it's just one of those songs, I think, that as soon as it gets ingrained into someone's life - you know, whether it's a certain memory that they associate with [Bloom] - it's kind of their song... everyone's got their own story about that song."

As well as recording a couple of their albums stateside (upcoming album On The Corner Where You Live in Connecticut and Twelvefour in Seattle), The Paper Kites have toured the US many times so the band's success in this region ain't no fluke. "Pretty much since Twelvefour came out we've just been nonstop on the road, which has been great," Bentley reflects. "I think the growth that we've seen since we put that record out - to where we are now - was massive and it was such an important record for us."

But the band took some time off recently "just to stay in one place, spend time with family and write these two records", Bentley says of On The Corner Where You Live and the band's previously released surprise album, On The Train Ride Home. "It's been so nice to just have a break."

When not touring, Bentley works in a cinema. "I've written a fair bit whilst I've been there," he confesses. "It's such a great place to work. I love film, so I think I really just work there for the love of it; you know, working some of those late shifts and just sort of being the last person in the cinema while the credits are rolling, it's - I dunno, it's a little bit romantic and I sort of brewed up a lot of the direction for these next two albums [On The Train Ride Home and On The Corner Where You Live] there."

Bentley describes The Paper Kites' pair of On The... records as like "part A and part B". "I mean, the initial idea was to sort of release them as a double album, but we thought it just might be too much content for people to fully appreciate the songs so we decided to split them up. I think the problem was there was such a mix of different songs - there were these sort of really earnest-but-minimal acoustic songs and then these sort of much bigger, band songs... So it just made sense to make them into two records. We thought that might be the best way to do it... So there's the double vinyl coming out [available on preorder right now] and then they're gonna be released as two separate albums as well." 

There's some saucy sax flourishes on The Paper Kites' latest offering, which, to this set of ears, call to mind the brass wails throughout that wonderful Richard Marx song Endless Summer Nights. Bentley explains, "I think the idea with having the saxophone on there was: I was really kind of drawn to - I don't know if you've ever heard any of them, but they're sort of 1950s mood records so they're all strings, there's a little bit of, like, trumpet or saxophone or brass. I know there's an album - Jackie Gleason, I think, was the conductor - and it's called Music To Make You Misty; you'll have to look at the cover, 'cause that was where a lot of the ideas for the [On The Corner Where You Live] artwork came from, you know, they're very overdramatic covers [fearuring] women kinda looking out the window, looking really pensive and dramatic - I absolutely love it and, yeah! They just have this kind of really suave, lonely feeling about them and [Music To Make You Misty is] a really beautiful record." It sounds like Music To Make You Misty could be an appropriate wooing album, an alternative to Barry White, perhaps. "Totally," Bentley chuckles. "The Barry White of the '50s, yeah." 

During our chat ahead of Twelvefour's release, both Bentley and fellow The Paper Kites vocalist/keyboardist Christina Lacy spoke of working with that album's producer, Phil Ek, recalling how much he pushed them vocally with his "tough love" approach, encouraging them to strive for the best possible vocal take without hiding behind double tracking. When asked whether they've continued this approach on the band's subsequent two albums, Bentley muses, "I certainly feel like I've found my voice to a degree and I'm fleshing it out and, yeah! It's kinda not hiding behind that little double that we used to do. And I still am pretty, like, hard on myself and that's probably a little bit of Phil in there as well. I was kind of that one who was, you know, in the booth for the late hours trying to just, yeah! Get the feeling I wanted, and Phil definitely pushed that out of me - and it's kind of stuck with me - and I really wanna get the yearning across and the hopefulness and the heartbreak and all of that stuff; like, I think it's very much dependant on how you deliver the lines so, yeah! I've definitely carried that with me. 

"But working with Peter [Katis] on this last record, he was really kind of relaxed and he's like, 'You do what you need to do to kind of get it sounding how you're hearing it.'" And it was Katis who suggested that The Paper Kites make their latest record in Connecticut. "He said, 'Look, I've got my own studio here, you can live in the studio as well. It'll only take maybe five or six weeks, so let's do that,'" Bentley recounts. "So off we went to Bridgeport, Connecticut... and the area that we were in, in Bridgeport, was actually kind of a bit of a rough area as far as Connecticut goes [laughs]. I think the actual city of Bridgeport is ranked quite highly in the crime-per-capita list. Peter said to us when we got there, he's like, 'So stay kind of on this side of the town, like, if you're gonna go for a run don't run in this direction, 'cause - it probably won't happen, but, you know, sometimes people get shot ha ha.' And we were like, 'Ok.'

"And the most beautiful part of the town was the cemetery, which was actually quite amazing. But the studio was in this 120-year-old sort of mansion, for lack of a better word, and it was three levels. And we would stay there and just record pretty much every day, and sometimes into the night; because we lived there, so we could kind of do it whenever we wanted. And we had studios going upstairs and downstairs, so I might be working on vocals upstairs and, you know, Dave [Powys, vocals/guitars/banjo/lap steel] and Christina might be working on stuff downstairs - it was really cool! It was the first time we've all lived together and made an album and, oh, it was awesome. I think we'd definitely gonna go back there again.

"The other guys have never actually been there to mix the record before but, yeah! This time everyone was there, everyone was in the same room. I think it's definitely the most collaborative record we've ever done; I think everyone really kinda cared about how it sounded... and even listening back to it I think it's probably one of the best-sounding records we've done so far."

Another producer on The Paper Kites wishlist is Nick Launay. Has the band reached out to him at all? Bentley laughs, "We actually hit him up for this last record, but I think he was working on a lot of stuff at the time. But I did have a chat to him on the phone and I was super-nervous, I was fanning out. He said that he liked the band. I think he did say that he felt like this record in particular - I think he may have even suggested Peter, 'cause they're managed by the same guy but, no, it hasn't happened yet with Nick. But maybe one day." 

Bentley believes The Paper Kites are the sort of band "that you go and see and they're kind of your little secret, and it's very personal to you, and then even if it's a sold-out show you're like, 'This is my band, all these people here don't know this band like I do,'" he laughs. "I think from talking to people after shows - we have some really dedicated fans and I think it is really personal to them. It is, like, a sort of solitude, headphone-listening experience maybe."

On what the biggest territories are for The Paper Kites at present, Bentley reveals, "Amsterdam's still right up there, according to Spotify - they give you all the stats. I think London's our biggest place, but then followed very closely by Los Angeles and New York but then, yeah! Places like Singapore and I think even Istanbul. And Sao Paulo in Brazil is huge for us, but we've never played there.

"So there's kind of all these markets that we haven't been able to get to yet, but there's still people listening. It always amazes me the widespread listening that we get. It's amazing that we have tools like Spotify now... I was definitely against it at first as well, but, like, just seeing how it totally changed everything and the reach that you have now is unlike anything we've ever seen before. You know, it may not translate in sales like it used to, but it does translate to people coming to your shows and I think that's a good thing.