It’s no easy feat filling out a performance in Melbourne the night of the AFL Grand Final but emerging indie folk outfit, The Paper Kites, managed to do exactly that.
The other night was their tenth and final national show performing to a home-town audience largely made up of young festival types with feathers in their fedoras and wreaths of flowers adorning their heads.
For such a young band there’s a solid set list where older numbers are interspersed with newer tracks off their debut album, States. Leading the performance was the album opener Malleable Beings. From the time the first chorus hit its clear, The Paper Kites is the sum of its parts as the quintet performed the track with beautifully complex layering.
With the deliverance of such an incredibly polished debut album there’s always some anticipation as to how the tracks are to translate live. Certain dreaminess is expected from a folk performance but the other night’s errs on the side of wishy-washy.
One of the album’s major highlights, Young, had front man Sam Bentley’s characteristic rolling finger-style guitar and repeated chorus lyrics that usually drive the momentum of the track.
Defying any temporal laws, through the headphones there’s an energy to it that feels as if the song is more circular than linear, as if it’s spinning around itself. However, this performance, just feels as if The Paper Kites are going through the motions.
This performance rounded out the tour of an incredibly talented band that, with a little time, will come to produce some standout performances. They just haven’t found their groove yet.
BY ISABELLA UBALDI
LOVED: The Forum
HATED: Not much
DRANK: Heaps
