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article by jennifer kelly | photos by candice eley
Architecture in Helsinki, all eight of their touring band, start their shows in darkness, huddled on the floor. You can see their bodies lumped together in the shadows. Depending on your general mood, it might look like some sort of sexual thing, the aftermath of a car bombing or naptime at the local preschool. The thing is, it's all there -- not just on stage but in their music, which is by turns sexy and irrepressible, childishly joyful and morbidly preoccupied with death.
So the ghostly strains of "Neverevereverdid" float from the speakers, and the crowd squeals in recognition. From this opening right through a disco-move-decorated cover of Roxy Music's "Love Is the Drug", the crowd is having fun in a way that crowds don't seem to do much anymore. It's like a party at band camp, where geekily adorable boys and girls break out the clarinets and flutes and xylophones and, count them, two trombones, and everybody's having a really good time. It only adds a very slight amount of dissonance when you remember that almost every song on In Case We Die is about the great hereafter.
I spoke to AIH singer, songwriter, guitarist and tribal chief Cameron Bird about this strange juxtaposition, his roots in rural Australia, the challenges of touring with nine people, and the making of the band's second album. Here's what he said...
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Splendid: Tell me about where you grew up.
Cameron Bird: I lived on a farm about 30 kilometers outside of a town for 18 years of my life, so I didn't have a lot of kind of urban influence in my life. It was very hard to listen to music. There wasn't a good record store in town. There was no radio. Well, there was radio, but there was only commercial radio, so I guess not until I was 17 or 18 did I really discover music. I did that when I first went to Melbourne, which is the nearest city.
Splendid: You didn't have a piano or anything?
Cameron Bird: We had a piano at home. My sister played, but I never learned music.
Splendid: So what was that like? You'd been in musical isolation and then you go to a college town where you're bombarded...
Cameron Bird: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Melbourne is a really big... as far as cities worldwide, it's second to Austin for venues per capita, so it's a really huge music scene. And Australia's a good music country. So, yeah, I mean, it was really exciting and liberating.
(We are briefly interrupted by staff at the venue, who are breaking down all the patio furniture, including the chairs we are sitting in. We stand up and continue.)
Cameron Bird: I guess moving to the city... In Australia, it's 18 years to drink and to go to bars, so yeah, as soon as I moved there, I would go to see three or four bands every week.
Splendid: What were some of the things that blew you away?
Cameron Bird: The first time I saw Pavement play. They played in Australia. I saw those guys at a really big festival there called Somersault. I went to that when I was still in high school, and that was the first kind of show I ever went to. And that was like, that was Pavement and the Beastie Boys and a whole bunch of huge alternative bands. So that probably changed my life, that show. There was Bikini Kill... a whole bunch of bands.
Splendid: Yeah? So you decided you wanted to play music?
Cameron Bird: I didn't really decide. It just kind of happened. It's still kind of happening. I guess we've been playing for five years now, but when it started, my girlfriend played guitar at the time, and I had no idea what to do with a guitar. I just started trying to play it. So I guess after a few months, I had enough songs that I liked to play live. And I guess, the first Architecture show was six months or something after I'd started playing guitar.
Splendid: Do you feel like you're still getting better?
Cameron Bird: Yeah, yeah, yeah, without a doubt. Always. I've only recently learned which string is which on guitar... so yeah.
Splendid: The songs on your record don't really sound like they were written on guitar.
Cameron Bird: No, they're not. Most of them are composed on the computer on a sequencing program, because I can't write music or read music. Being the main songwriter in the band, composing and writing music is a little bit strange because it's so many people. So a lot of time, I'll record things for other instruments in a really basic manner and give it to people and say, "What do you think of this?" And they'll play it and work on it from there.
Splendid: You've been pretty clear that In Case We Die is not a concept album.
Cameron Bird: Yep.
Splendid: But it really feels like you couldn't play it in another order.
Cameron Bird: Sure.
Splendid: How are the pieces and the whole related?
Cameron Bird: Thematically and lyrically, the whole album was, totally subconsciously, about death.
Splendid: That's what I thought... but in a happy way.
Cameron Bird: Yeah, yeah... but I didn't ever mean for it to have those themes. When I was looking back at the songs, at the end of recording the album, I noticed that every song on the record related in some way to death or mortality and to, whatever, existentialism. So, yeah, the order of the album... it was definitely something that I labored over.
Splendid: Did you think of it in the sequence it was in, or did you have to piece it together?
Cameron Bird: There were certain songs that I knew where they were going to go. Like I knew "Neverevereverdid" was always going to be the first song. I like to think of making a record as being like a Side A and Side B. I'm very much influenced by that vinyl format. So, yeah, I don't know. It was, but not really. It wasn't like Brian Wilson making Smile or something where everything was totally ...
AUDIO: Neverevereverdid
Splendid: At one point I had it on shuffle play, within the album, and it wasn't working.
Cameron Bird: Yeah, I'm sure. I guess because the sounds and the start of each song are so disparate and different that it wouldn't work.
Splendid: So, what's it like having eight people on tour?
Cameron Bird: Ah... (He laughs.) We all get along really well.
Splendid: Is there somebody you always have to wait for?
Cameron Bird: Yeah, totally. Always.
Splendid: I went to Epcot Center one time with nine people, and it was the worst experience of my life. We spent the whole time deciding what we were going to do next, and looking for a couple of people who were always wandering off.
Cameron Bird: Yeah, yeah.
Splendid: How do you organize that?
Cameron Bird: Ahhh... Not very well. We've toured a lot now as a big group, and we always toured with a sound man, who is essentially part of the group. So we've always toured with nine people. Yeah, there's always trying times, but it's fun. We have a laugh every day.
Splendid: How did you find all the people that are in the band?
Cameron Bird: Well, like I said before, Sam and Jamie and I -- I've known Sam since I was five. We grew up in the same small town. Our mothers met at a cross stitch club.
Splendid: Wow.
Cameron Bird: Then Jamie is also from the same area. We met him in high school. And then the three of us went to Melbourne. I went to school... I guess at my art school, I met the rest of the band. I wasn't studying music. I was studying photography.
Splendid: Are you still doing any of that?
Cameron Bird: Yeah, not as much as I used to. But I have occasional exhibitions and do photographs for other groups. Yeah, and then I met the rest of the guys through school, and Kellie I met at a party, and we all just kind of jelled really well. It was never a conscious decision to have so many people, or that that group of people would actually end up in the band. It just kind of happened. They're all really different people, like maybe you'll see when we perform, but it works out very easily.
Splendid: From what it sounds like on your record, you must hear all these different sounds in your head when you write a song.
Cameron Bird: Definitely, especially on this record, it was something that I had had in my head for a long time. Some of the songs we had had kicking around for a couple of years. I had initially done demos of them with a whole lot of other sounds -- opera singers -- that I'd recorded about two years ago, but just on the keyboards with different samples. I had it all this time, and when it came to recording it, I was like, I really want to do it exactly like that. And then somehow, it came out the way it did. It's really funny to hear the original sketches of the songs.
Splendid: You have all that?
Cameron Bird: Yeah, yeah.
Splendid: Maybe for the box set?
Cameron Bird: Yeah, one day.
Splendid: So there are a lot of interesting sounds on the album. There are fireworks at one point. Do you do a lot of that, incorporating real sounds?
Cameron Bird: We're definitely... Some of the guys in the band come from more of a sound art background, where they would go out and do field recordings. We're really into musique concrete and stuff like that. The people in the band are all very different, and we all have different musical backgrounds.
Splendid: Like what?
Cameron Bird: Well, James... the thing that ties us together is that we all just fall in love with the music, and we all love everything from punk to top 40. On any one day, people in the band will probably listen to the most ridiculous array of things. But I guess James has played in a lot of bands... He's a sound engineer, so James and I produced In Case We Die and we recorded it ourselves. And there's a kind of school band background that some of our people have -- people who played in band in high school. Then there's Jamie, who played guitar for one year. Everyone is so different, in terms of what they're interested in.
Splendid: You're interested in the Tropicalia movement, aren't you?
Cameron Bird: Yeah, that particular movement and that whole time in the music industry is so inspiring. It was such a reaction -- it was such a radical thing in that culture and in that time, and the music that came out of it was so impassioned. The way that they were combining Western pop music and traditional music was just incredible. The melody was so amazing and still, it was openly experimental, which a lot of pop music isn't. I don't know. It's so inspirational, that whole movement.
AUDIO: Do the Whirlwind
Splendid: I understand that the people in Os Mutantes, for instance, were incredible, classically trained musicians.
Cameron Bird: Yeah, incredible... And they built all their own amplifiers and all their own pedals and things.
Splendid: That must appeal to you.
Cameron Bird: Yeah.
Splendid: Do you do any of that stuff?
Cameron Bird: Eamon, who's our sound guy, builds a lot of stuff for us.
Splendid: I know you get compared quite a bit to Arcade Fire, which is not an entirely bad thing...
Cameron Bird: Oh, yeah, no...
Splendid: But it's partly what we were talking about. It's like this really happy sounding record about death. How did that come to be on your mind?
Cameron Bird: It was kind of funny because, I mean, with Arcade Fire. These two albums came out... Theirs came out quite a lot before ours, but we had albums that came out sort of at the same time. But musically, we don't have that many similarities..
Splendid: Xylophones.
Cameron Bird: Well, yeah, yeah, probably they have some similar influences. But when I listen to their record and I listen to our record, there aren't a lot of similarities. The whole death thing was like... it started out being about distance and being away from the people you love. I spent a lot of time away from my girlfriend last year. She was all the way on the other side of the world. I guess there was that whole thing...
Splendid: You've got to teach her how to play the trombone or something.
Cameron Bird: That's right. But the recording process was during all this separation. We were in this room, which was essentially a garage -- it's got no windows -- and it was the middle of winter, so it was freezing cold. It was really, really bleak. We did it for four or five months, James and I. Every day, recording. And I guess in all that time, working on this one thing that you're really focused on, you start to have all these thoughts. I've never really had any existential thoughts. Everyone thinks about death and dying and what's going to happen to them when they die, but...
Splendid: Well, we all desperately try not to think about that.
Cameron Bird: Yeah, that's right. But it's inevitable that you will at some point. And a lot of the songs were written during that time. I'd say half the album was written during the recording process. Looking back, as I said, through all our lyrics, there are these references to it. I kind of became obsessed with. Just the whole experience of recording and being away from the person that you love.
Splendid: You recorded in Melbourne? Where was your girlfriend?
Cameron Bird: My girlfriend was overseas for a long time. Yeah, and... there was this point where we were almost finished and it was getting really close to being done. The house that I live in was a few blocks from the studio, and it was like four or five in the morning, and I was walking home in the rain with the headphones on listening to what we'd recorded, and I walked in front of a car. I almost got hit by a car. That was the point where everything started to fall into place.
Splendid: It's a strange experience listening to that album, because it's got that happy, peppy tone to it, and you'll be singing along and you realize that you're singing about death or someone with a sword in their side, you know?
Cameron Bird: Yeah, I guess I kind of like bands that have things in their lyrics and their music that are really open to interpretation. They're not necessarily black and white. You can make of them what you will.
Splendid: What would be a good example of that?
Cameron Bird: I've always really liked...without it being a social or political commentary or anything like that, I've always really like David Byrne's musical observations.
Splendid: Didn't you guys do some shows with him?
Cameron Bird: Yeah, we did.
Splendid: Which do you prefer, Talking Heads or solo?
Cameron Bird: Oh, both, he's just an amazing mind. He's great. He's got this amazing way of just taking really mundane situations and making them poignant. He's an inspiration in that sense. I don't know who else... I could probably think of others if I had time. But the lyrics... I kind of like that the music does have that joyous, exuberant quality but the undertones are really dark. A lot of people would totally miss that.
Splendid: I missed it the first few times. Do you have a lyric sheet in the finished album?
Cameron Bird: It's on the web site.
Splendid: You know what I like? In "Need to Shout", there's a lyric that says, "There's never a reason for shouting when it's quiet," and then a minute later you're all shouting. That's cool.
Cameron Bird: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool.
Splendid: So was there anything -- I know you said that a lot of times you hear things in your head and then you try to make them happen with instruments. Was there anything you couldn't make happen?
Cameron Bird: You could always say that. You could spend five years making an album and not get everything exactly how you wanted.
Splendid: Which songs are the closest to the way that you envisioned them?
Cameron Bird: "In Case We Die" is my favorite song on the album. And probably "Neverevereverdid".
Splendid: The first one?
Cameron Bird: Yeah, those two I like. But I like "In Case We Die" the most. That was something that was always in my head...
AUDIO: In Case We Die (parts 1-4)
Splendid: What do you feel like you achieved with that song?
Cameron Bird: It takes all those elements that I like about the way that the band works as a group... I think it's really a strong song. It has all the elements of music that I would like to make. I'm just the most proud of that song.
Splendid: The very first song... It has all these cool sounds that I can't quite place. There's an organ or something and a gong.
Cameron Bird: There is an organ. We did a lot of percussion. A friend of ours is a professional percussionist. His name is Graham Lake, and he actually plays percussion in an Ennio Morricone cover band. And he's amazing. He does shows. He's a genius. We went to his house. He said "Any time you want to come do some recording at my house, come over," and James and I are huge percussion fans. We went over one day, and his house is like shelves and shelves laden with percussion instruments. For that song, we laid... We had this big table, which was sort of two meters square, and we went around the room and picked all the things we wanted to hear and put them on the table. So we played the song and we all just hit the things on the table. It was a lot of fun.
Splendid: It sounds like fun. So, recording this album was a lot more stable in terms of doing it all in one place.
Cameron Bird: Yeah. The first album we recorded in 12 different studios. Different houses and different laundries and back yards. And this time, we were like, "We're not doing that again." It took us two years to finish our first album. It was like a hobby, the first album. This album, we were like, "We're going to make this in one place." It's hard now, because when we go back to that place now, it's so located in the recording of the album. I find it really hard to be inspired there any more.
Splendid: You couldn't do it there again?
Cameron Bird: Not there. No. I couldn't. No way.
Splendid: Are you writing songs for the next album?
Cameron Bird: Yes.
Splendid: How's that going?
Cameron Bird: I don't ever have a formula for writing songs. I don't force myself to write them. I'd rather have it happen naturally. I might write ten songs in a month and nothing for a while. But, yeah, it's going well.
Splendid: It must be hard, though, being on the move all the time. What kind of stuff do you bring with you?
Cameron Bird: We usually have a laptop and a recording device. We can sit in the van and record things.
Splendid: Is it all you doing the writing, or do other people...
Cameron Bird: Oh, no, everyone does some. With varying degrees on each song.
Splendid: Oh, I wanted to ask you about the video for "Do the Whirlwind". Who did that and how did it happen?
Cameron Bird: Our friend Paul Robertson, who took the same art course that we all studied in, so he's another person from that course. He's 22. He's an absolute genius. I've never seen anyone animate as fast as he can animate. He does advertising in Australia for really big companies. Like he did an ad for -- do you guys have Cadbury Chocolate?
Splendid: Yes.
Cameron Bird: You do? Well, he did an ad for them in Australia. It took him like two or three days to make this commercial.
Splendid: Wow, he's going to make a ton of money.
Cameron Bird: Maybe, yeah, he's an absolute genius.
Splendid: I like that song. Is that the single?
Cameron Bird: Yeah, at least in Australia it is.
Splendid: The rhythm... You know that Monty Python movie with the coconuts?
Cameron Bird: Yeah.
Splendid: It reminds me of that a little.
Cameron Bird: Cool, we love Monty Python.
Splendid: It's a cool song. So you're in the US now, what will you do next?
Cameron Bird: We've got some shows in the UK. That's our first time to go there.
Splendid: It's your second time here, though.
Cameron Bird: Yeah, we came last year. We came right as that first album was coming out. It was really a great thing to do. We learned a lot, but it also meant that no one had really heard of us.
Splendid: You're getting a lot better reception this time?
Cameron Bird: Yeah, definitely. I mean, coming here after two albums. It's been great.
Splendid: What do you miss from Australia besides your girlfriend?
Cameron Bird: That's the main thing. Gee... I don't know. I just like being at home.
Splendid: Anything that strikes you as odd about the US?
Cameron Bird: Orange cheese. Preoccupation with upsizing everything... Making everything huge.
Splendid: Like the food. I was buying something at 7-11 before I came, and this woman was buying a soda that was bigger than my head.
Cameron Bird: I saw one of those the other day. It was as big as a bucket. That's probably it. There's a whole lot of things.
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It takes a nation of millions to hold Jennifer Kelly back.
[ graphics credits :: header/pulls - george zahora | photos - candice eley :: credits graphics ]
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