The Paper Kites: On the Corner Where You Live

The Paper Kites are enjoying a short break at home after returning from recording in the U.S. Their upcoming album “On the Corner Where You Live” was completed in Connecticut with super producer Peter Katis. It’s the second album they’ve made abroad.
“It has its advantages to record away from home, it also has its disadvantages, like being away from family is hard,” Dave Powys, one fifth of the Paper Kites, says as he cooks dinner for his young family.
“The good thing about it is, you’re isolated in your creativity, you’re able to really focus on what you’re doing. Squeeze the most out of the time.”
Time is a precious commodity for all parents, even more so when they’re working musicians too. Powys and The Paper Kites are back on the road touring in the U.S in November.
The Paper Kites have managed to do what few have done before in finding success in the land of Hollywood, Pop-tarts, and Ryan Gosling, joining a small number of Aussie acts to go gold in the U.S (including ACDC, INXS, Flume, and SIA).
“On the Corner Where You Live” sounds like Drive looks, brooding Ryan Gosling and all. Powys agrees, “Especially Deep Burn Blue, has that feeling of Drive for me.”
Ironically, the album closes out with a track titled ‘Don’t Keep Driving’.
‘Deep Burn Blue’ is the first single released off the upcoming record. To Powys, it really “sounds like one of the tracks or scenes from that movie (Drive).”
It’s no surprise then that Cinema plays a big part for the band in their creative process. “What we really aim to do is create mood and create visuals for people, even individually. When you find a song that becomes the soundtrack for your own life, it makes everything feel richer when you find something that fits, or even changes, your own mood.”
Their tour schedule has been hectic to say the least since they proliferated thanks to streaming services and playlist plugs – they have a near three million monthly listeners on Spotify alone. Touring over twenty countries in three years, the band has been to some far flung places on the road. For Powys, a city in Poland felt the furthest from home.
“We’d come from summer back home and we’d ended up in Poznań which was snowing, and it was like minus-thirty degrees or something… That just felt like the end of the earth,” he punctuates.
With two parents already in the band and a third member expecting before their next tour, Powys concedes life on the road can be hard when you have to leave a family back at home.
“It’s funny when you meet other musicians on the road who have families back home, you instantly find a connection of ‘oh man you’ve got kids at home too, how hard is it?’”
And on that note, we let him get back to dinnertime before it’s back to work once again.
Release: On the Corner Where You Live is out September 21.
Written by Darby-Perrin Larner