Somehow Birds of Tokyo snuck up on us. In the dozen years since forming in Perth these five unassuming guys have gradually grown – song by song, gig by gig – into Australia’s biggest contemporary rock band. They may not yet be household names but their songs have been heard in everyone’s home.
The group has won multiple ARIA and APRA awards. They’ve co-headlined virtually every important music festival in this country. They’ve had tracks in major TV and film campaigns and even played the AFL Grand Final. All of this was driven by a string of emotive anthems that have dominated radio, from Triple J’s Hottest 100 to the commercial FM charts … big songs like ‘Plans’, ‘Broken Bones’, ‘Wild At Heart’, ‘This Fire’, ‘Lanterns’, ‘Anchor’ and their latest hit single ‘I’d Go With You Anywhere’. It’s an airplay streak unmatched by any Australian artist since Powderfinger.
Even so, for most people Birds of Tokyo have still somehow ‘flown under the radar’. Until now. Their new compilation album, Playlist, gathers all these songs (and 10 more) into one undeniable 18-track bundle. For all but their most hardcore fans, the collection is a revelation. Casual listeners will be surprised to realize that they actually already know the words and melodies for most of these tunes.
“Yeah we hear that a lot”, chuckles the group’s frontman, Ian Kenny. “Whenever we play a festival someone always comes up afterwards and says, ‘I didn’t know you guys did that song and that song’. I never know what to say. Maybe now I can just tell them to listen to this album and then they’ll basically be up to speed!”
The idea for Playlist actually began last year when the band was based in the U.S. and starting to introduce themselves to a new audience over there.
“It was a bit weird”, explains guitarist Adam Spark. “After making music for ages we were suddenly doing interviews for the “new faces” sections of magazines again. We needed to give American music industry people a quick sense of what the band was all about so we created a playlist that had a couple of key tracks off each album.”
Drummer Adam Weston adds, “After we first put it together on Soundcloud we listened back to the whole thing and we were actually kinda surprised. It was like we’d gone for a long walk and when we eventually paused to look back we realized we’d travelled a lot further than we thought.”
The band also soon realized that plenty of people back home might only have paid attention to one small part of that journey so it made sense to make their private U.S. playlist available to everyone in case they wanted to explore the band in a bit more depth.
It’s therefore apt that the set is lead by the irresistible ‘I’d Go With You Anywhere’ … the single’s title says it all. Playlist actually retraces the band’s musical voyage in reverse – from newest song to oldest, with the song ‘Puzzle’ from the band’s recent Anchor EP included to bookend the collection. It’s a trip that includes songs recorded in Europe, America and multiple parts of Australia, from the epic moodiness of more recent works to the ramshackle indie rock of their earliest years. It’s clearly been quite a ride so far.