It's been seven years since Little Birdy first played the Perth's Grosvenor Hotel and stumbled their way through a set with a small audience and a bundle of nerves. After a break and the release of their last album Hollywood the quartet, fronted by Katy Steele, have produced a brand new album filled with a bunch of surprises, and they're dying to hit the road.
yourGigs (yG): We've already heard two singles off your new album Confetti. How are you feeling about it all?
Katy Steele (KS): Well the first gig we did back after a year and a half off was Sound Relief ... There were ... a few people there [Laughs]. But we did play 'Summarize' and 'Brother' there, and it was a pretty good show. We haven't played the new stuff with all the new string lines and arrangements ever, so we're getting pretty antsy!
yG: Have you had much response to your new material?
Matt Chequer (MC): We put 'Brother' down as a free download on our website. We got over 10,000 downloads, so that was awesome - it was kind of just a taster for the new album and it did its job. 'Summarize' seems to be getting a good response too, people are really digging the film clip.
yG: On that film clip, it seems to be quite a mix of genres: a bit of Motown and a bit of pop.
KS: It's really quite art-inspired, it's the first clip I think where the guys really had a good time [Laughs]. I'm always really excited by the clips and really enjoy making them but they have to just stand around and do stupid things. But this time they had six hot chicks around [Laughs].
MC: And we got to play the whole song through while we were recording which we usually don't get to do; usually they have us play a snippet and then we wait around for four hours.
KS: But no matter how many times - and this surprises me - that we've played and heard this song ourselves I'm still not sick of it.
MC: Give it six months. [Laughs].
yG: Surely with material like this it makes room for some great costuming and props, even on stage?
MC: Well ... Katy likes to dress up.
KS: Yeah, I'm often running in to where the guys are, going: "What do you reckon about these shoes with this skirt?"
MC: We don't care. Well we care. But we can't say it doesn't look good because then she'll have a tantrum.
KS: Yeah. [Laughs]. It's true, I'll be like "What do you mean?" and then storm out. You've got to feel good though, when you're up in front of everyone.
yG: You've got some really contrasting tunes on the album. What were you listening to at the time?
KS: It is quite eclectic. I was listening to The Shangri-Las heaps. Odetta - you know soul, Aretha-inspired stuff; and the guys and I were all listening to tons of Midlake.
yG: So apart from the obvious musical influences, what have you done differently this time around when it came to recording Confetti?
MC: We were getting it down on tape, in one take as well - we weren't overdubbing. I think you can hear that on the recording. People have pointed it out to me. And it didn't really take that long for Katy to get it right either because as we all know she can sing pretty much anything.
KS: Yeah, let's keep talking about that. [Laughs].
You also produced the album yourselves, was that a risk for you?
MC: It was a hard decision to try and produce, to have the confidence to actually do it. Our manager suggested it first, and thought if we got a really good engineer that we could do it ourselves.
KS: I was a bit hesitant; I don't have much recording expertise. I don't know how to set a mic up. I do know what I like and what I don't like and I guess I didn't trust myself as much as I should have. We were really particular and we really didn't settle for second best.
yG: From start to finish, how long has Confetti taken to come together?
KS: We've taken our time, so probably two years altogether really from writing, to demoing, to recording and so on. We're really f***ing excited though. We took our time and got it right, the artwork, the clip, everything is coming out the way we want it.
yG: How are you preparing for this album tour?
KS: Tons of rehearsing, lots of vitamins, making sure I'm really healthy for singing and the tour - got to look after the voice.
MC: Yeah we're all going to the gym. [Laughs]. Practicing beer drinking - got to build the tolerance up.
yG: You've got a bunch of new instruments on the new album, will they be on tour too?
KS: We're getting Fergus, our piano guy, back on track for touring. He's got the real sounds programmed in so we're not going to have all the live instruments on stage but for the next tour that's definitely what we're going to try and do, doing a massive show with the horns and the backing singers and everything. We have to honour the album.
yG: Paul Kelly features on 'Brother' with harmonica and some vocals. Did that come from when you toured with him, Katy?
KS: Well we became good mates there, but I think it was your idea, hey Matty?
MC: I could hear the harmonica bit on there and thought "Well, Katy knows Paul Kelly..." [Laughs]. But I didn't think his voice would fit in, and as soon as he started singing we all just sat back in awe.
KS: We literally wrote the lyrics out for him while he was standing there. He was only really in there to do the harmonica bit!
yG: Finally, what can we expect from Confetti that we haven't heard from Little Birdy before?
KS: We didn't really have any fear with this album, it all kind of fits in even though there are different styles. It's really pure. We gave each song what it needed. We get really bored when albums all sound the same so I guess we wanted to write something that we would enjoy listening to.
MC: Yeah not that we love listening to ourselves...
KS: "What are you listening to? Oh, Little Birdy, and that's it!" [Laughs].
Carrie Dennes
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