The brand new Paper Kites EP, Young North, came out just a few weeks ago, although as Bentley tells it, this is an EP that almost never happened at all. “We were gearing up to do an album, but we had so many songs sitting in our pile, we just decided to do this as a bit of a stepping stone.” It’s been over a year since the band’s last EP, and this spur-of-the-moment release proved to be a good way of keeping fans up to date with goings-on in the world of The Paper Kites. “I think that when you only release five or six songs at a time, people can have a certain idea of what you sound like,” Bentley says, “so it’s always nice to bring out some new music and bring people up to date with what we’ve been working on and where we’re at musically.”
The EP features some extremely personal moments for the band – like the song Leopold Street, which was inspired by Bentley’s grandpa. “He built a house for his wife when they’d just been married, on Leopold Street in Ballarat,” he says. “They grew up and raised their family in it their whole lives, and they she passed away around give years ago. The song is written from his perspective, but it’s about how difficult it must be to live in a house where you’ve lived your whole life with someone, but are now living alone. I imagine he struggled quite a bit with it. I wrote that song about that.” He heard it for the first time the other week, and I was a bit nervous, because I thought it might upset him a bit, but he loved it, he thought it was really nice, and he really appreciated it.”
The Paper Kites are all set to head off on a national tour this month, and with their plethora of instruments, hitting the road can turn into quite a production. “It can be an absolute nightmare,” Bentley laughs. “Packing the van is always interesting, and walking to the airport, people are always staring at us because we have two trolleys loaded to the brim with guitar cases. We’ve had a pretty good run … we haven’t lost anything yet. Everyone’s responsible for a certain portion of the gear. It’s hard, and it takes up a lot of stage space having so any instruments, but it’s definitely worth it. I think that’s part of what makes our show unique.”
The Paper Kites have shared stages with Josh Pyke and Boy & Bear over the past year, and each one of the shows they played was a valuable learning experience. “We were pretty much babies when we were first asked to do the Josh Pyke tour,” Bennett say with a laugh. “We didn’t know anything about touring, we were doing everything on our own, and we were really nervous, because we didn’t want to do the wrong thing – you know, making sure we didn’t sneak upstairs and drink their rider or anything like that – but Josh and his crew turned out to be really great people. They were really keen to pass down their experiences of life on the road to us, and we were really eager to learn.”
Boy & Bear were similarly inspiring. “I remember arriving at the venue on the day of our first gig with them,” Bennet says. “They were on stage rehearsing, but they jumped off and came over to introduce themselves. That’s the kind of guys they are.” Boy & Bear and The Paper Kites ended up spending a lot of time together on that tour. “They were in our green room more than they were in theirs!” Bennett tells me. “We had a great time just hanging out. They just gave us a lot of advice about being on the road and how to navigate the music scene, how touring works. I really admire and respect them still, and that was a great and fortunate experience.”
So has this set the model for how The Paper Kites will treat their own support acts, Art Of Sleeping and Battleships, when they set off on the road? “Absolutely,” Bennett says. “We know now what it’s like to be a young band on tour for the first time and be a bit nervous and a bit overwhelmed, so we really want to do what Josh and Boy & Bear did for us, and pass down things we’ve learned to younger bands.”
BY ALASDAIR DUNCAN
