The Paper Kites

A ragtag group of teenagers stand around the edges of a public pool, bodies bathed in shimmering blue light. Across one wall, a film plays – black-and-white images of athletes, their faces contorted. Soon the gang take turns diving into the water, the air taut with an energy nobody wants to understand.

So it goes in The Paper Kites’ dreamy video for ‘Renegade’, a cinematic snapshot of adolescence and vague melancholia that almost wasn’t. “The more we thought about the the more we realised it was going to be difficult to make,” laughs Sam Bentley, the band’s lead singer. “Mainly ’cause we thought about shooting in Australia, but there’s so many rules about using public pools after dark and after hours. We just couldn’t pull it off here.

“So we got in touch with a guy called Dan Huiting who we had done the ‘Revelator Eyes’ video with, and he said he could pull it off. He shot it in Minneapolis. He had all these great connections. He knew the group of kids who [appear] in the video. They were like a local skate crew, which was really sweet ’cause they had that grommit vibe. They were already friends, which was good for the chemistry in the video. They were up for that kind of thing.”

The ‘Renegade’ clip is another success for a band that has become famous for valuing the visuals it puts out as much as the music. “Is it just me or are these videos better than the songs?” reads one comment under the ‘Revelator Eyes’ video, and though there’s a flock of diehard fans out there ready to argue nothing is better than the band’s songs, Bentley himself acknowledges the importance of the moving image in his practice.

“I think you are able to imply visual things [with music], even if it’s just a colour or a certain image,” he says. “Even with the neon cover we came up with for [latest album Twelvefour], I wanted to get across those colours to everyone while they listened to the record. That’s what people’s minds go to when they think about the record – those neon colours.

“I find it hard to write without seeing where someone would be listening to the song, or in what scenario,” Bentley continues. “Like, is it a driving around at night song? Is it a lying around at the beach song? I always have that kind of stuff in mind, because I think music is definitely a visual thing, even if people don’t realise. I mean, there are bands like Sigur Rós who don’t even [have] lyrics that are in English, and you can still feel exactly what they want you to feel. It kind of transcends a lot of understanding. It’s all about feeling – about how songs make you feel. About how records make you feel. Certainly that’s the kind of music that I love. That’s what I want to tap into. Music is its own language.”

Given The Paper Kites’ cinematic pedigree, it’s unsurprising that their upcoming tour will include plenty of recorded footage. The so-titled Midnight show will be a fully immersive experience rather than just a regular gig, featuring a filmed backdrop of apartment windows through which the audience will be able to glimpse brief flashes of strangers’ lives.

It’s the perfect way to celebrate the ‘trilogy’ of videos the band put out in support of Twelvefour, but more than that, it will also be a true moment of satisfaction for the group, and particularly Bentley. For the accomplished Melbourne songwriter, performing live is an integral part of why music matters. Though he evidently adores the process of locking himself away and writing songs, he makes it sound like a kind of artistic guesswork – like stumbling around a room with the lights off.

“You can certainly sit down and say, ‘I want to write this kind of song,’ and then sometimes it takes a direction you didn’t expect,” he says. “But there’s certainly a part of my writing where I sit down and say, ‘This is how I want someone to feel, listening to this song.’ When you’re writing … you hope they can understand and sympathise. Or you hope that you’re able to move them in some way.”

The art of performing live is a different beast entirely. Rather than guessing or manipulating, you are seeing the fruits of your labours unfold before your very eyes, and it’s that kind of instant gratification that Bentley is so looking forward to when The Paper Kites take their show on the road.

“Most of the time you talk to people after playing a show and they say, ‘I was really moved by this particular song,’ and you say, ‘That’s kind of what I wanted you to feel.’ It’s really rewarding when you’re able to connect with people like that.”

Bentley laughs, but his voice sounds almost awed. “You see people with their eyes closed. People even crying, not out of any kind of hysteria, just because a song has become their song, and they’re affected in that way. I think that’s the biggest pay-off that you could ever get.”