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Thursday 28 October 12:48 p.m.
What could possibly be next for Birds Of Tokyo?
What could possibly be next in a line that includes one of the most accomplished Australian independent debuts of the last 10 years, a Gold-selling follow-up album, and one of the most creative re-imaginings to have hit the Australian stage?
Beautifully, the answer is impossible to put into words.
But we don’t have to try anyway. As a taste of their third album- The Saddest Thing I Know says it all.
Grand, soaring and sweetly melancholic; The Saddest Thing I Know is a lead single in the most potent of Birds Of Tokyo traditions... the breathtaking ascent at the start of the rollercoaster.
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Touching on heightened emotions, The Saddest Thing I Know wastes not a second before unleashing Birds Of Tokyo’s trademark wall of riffs, with the unmistakable voice of Ian Kenny centred and leading the expedition through feelings of helplessness and futility.
‘You keep coming up for air / To find your own foot pushing on your head’, the singer exclaims with irresistible darkness, as the swell of music rises around him like a tidal wave ominously working its way towards an abrupt, crashing conclusion.
But as tasty as it is, The Saddest Thing I Know is but a wee nibble of the banquet Birds Of Tokyo have prepared. Ever wanting to see how far they can push their creative boundaries, Birds Of Tokyo returned from their exquisite Broken Strings tour determined to create an album far beyond anything they had previously imagined.
And, as always, they chose their own adventure.
Recorded across Sydney, Gothenburg and New York City; Comfort In Exile saw Birds Of Tokyo teaming up with producer Scott Horscroft (The Presets, Silverchair, Sleepy Jackson) and mixer Michael Brauer (Coldplay, My Morning jacket, Phoenix), with the band’s guitarist and creative director Adam Spark manning co-pilot. Armed with an inextinguishable sense of adventure and a powerhouse work ethic, the team took to producing the album with the same sense of flair and daring that the band had written it with.
And while it’s tempting to keep saying that, this record is ‘Birds Of Tokyo as you’ve never seen them before’, there doesn’t seem any point in using that phrase these days, as it is something we can all just expect of the band regardless.
Reintroduction is what Birds do best.
The band’s debut, fittingly titled Day One, kicked down the door, introducing Birds Of Tokyo to the world in a flurry of hooks and supersized choruses. Darker and harder-hitting, second album Universes compounded the band’s song-writing savvy into a leaner and more muscular album that earned Birds Of Tokyo their first Gold Record. An accomplished touring act as they already were, Birds Of Tokyo pushed the boundaries even further with Broken Strings: the CD/DVD release of their sell-out Australian theatre tour that saw the band re-imagine their own work, marrying it to a string quartet and grand piano.
Darker and more self-aware still, The Saddest Thing I Know is the perfect bridge between that Birds Of Tokyo and this one, but it is no more telling of what is to come than the calm is telling of the storm...
It is simply a way of saying get ready.