“I think it’s a case of just wanting to stretch ourselves and explore different sounds. It’s about releasing something where we feel like it isn’t the same as what we’ve done before,” she says between sips of coffee. “It’s challenged us, in a way, so we can be really proud of it.”
Twelvefour marks new sonic ground for the group, taking their pop/folk capacity and blending it with lush, atmospheric production and a darker edge that was absent from previous releases. The album began as a labour of love for lead vocalist Sam Bentley, who reversed his sleep patterns for two months and penned 30 songs between midnight and the break of dawn. Hence the album’s title: the underlying concept is that that an artist’s creative peak is between the hours of midnight and four am. As such, the album occupies a dream-like space, beholden to neither night nor day.
“Sam had an idea of these textural sounds that we wanted to include,” says Lacy. “It’s probably becoming a bit typical of our sound as well. States started to experiment more with textures and building a little bit more depth. Sonically, I think Twelvefour is a continuation of that and kind of creating that midnight feeling.”
Producer Phil Ek (Father John Misty, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, The Shins) played an integral part in translating and distilling that midnight feeling onto the record. Determined to capture the sound they heard in their head, the group travelled to Seattle to record with Ek.
“Having someone like Phil on board with so much experience is awesome,” Lacy says. “Phil is pretty blunt, so if something isn’t working he’ll suggest, ‘No, no, no, let’s try this’. We were all on the same page with the sounds we were after, so when we got them, everybody knew. We loved working with him. There are some things on the record where maybe we wanted to make them a certain way, but it just wasn’t working. Sometimes as a band we can be too nice to each other so we kind of needed Phil to be that person. Just having that experienced person in the room was good. It was all a learning process of trying to work together and be creative together.”
In contrast to the acoustic folk styling of their earlier work, Twelvefour sees The Paper Kites embracing some more unexpected influences – in particular, the crystallised sheen of the 1980s. “It’s taking the awesome parts from that ‘80s sound. It is shiny, but it still lends itself to those atmospherics. It’s about taking those bits and pieces and making them our own. There have been hints of these sounds coming back into music with things being released in the last five years. I think that’s great.”
Thanks to Bentley’s intensive writing efforts and the band’s tireless dedication in the demoing and recording process, Twelvefour comes across as the band’s most focused and cohesive sounding album to date. “For me, this album feels a lot more… I want to say it makes a lot more sense,” Lacy says. “States was a 13 track album. It was our debut. I feel like we had all these songs and we didn’t want to leave any good ones off. Whereas I feel like with Twelvefour, it’s a lot clearer. The intention of the album was clearer for us. It feels like a much nicer, neater package. It’s a ten-track, and it was so hard to choose those ten because we recorded 12 and the other two were so good”.
With a string of shows on the horizon, Lacy and her bandmates are eager to take their newfound sound out on the road. “Just last night we started our first round of tour rehearsals. We set up our rehearsal space last night and had a big chat about the setlist, about the set and how we want it to start. All the nitty-gritty tour details about production and that sort of stuff. We’re just at the very beginning of getting all that going and it’s really exciting. It made me really excited about the album again to talk about songs and arrangements. I think it’s going to be really sweet touring these songs for the first time.”
In the same way The Paper Kites have challenged themselves to explore new stylistic terrain and branch out from the familiar, Twelvefour aims to have that effect on listeners. “Our hope is that they are intrigued by it,” says Lacy. “I guess our hope is that people listen to it not just as The Paper Kites being a folky sort of a sound, but as an expanded soundscape for us too.”
BY JAMES DI FABRIZIO
