FEATURE: BRACE YOURSELF

摘要

It was the day after the final US Presidential debate, almost three weeks before Trump came home for the upset win -- upsetting half the US population, overconfident polling pundits, and liberals everywhere. Birds of Tokyo singer Ian Kenny was agitated and bored by the payoff after such a momentous build up. "In a way, who cares? But of course you care," he said. "How often do you want to be part of the circus?" That sentiment flows through the band's latest album, Brace. On one hand, you want to detach from the political circus, but on the other, there's a responsibility to engage. The album seems uncharacteristically heavy -- musically and lyrically. Whether Kenny's calling for revolt, predicting destruction, or warning about the outcomes of selfish desire, his bandmates are laying down an equally crushing soundtrack. "That weight of music has always been in our bones and language when we talk about songs," said Kenny. Indeed, after re-reading the lyrics for the band's biggest commercial pop hit, Lanterns, it's right there for anyone to see. Though the call for an uprising feels more like a subtext cloaked by the anthem's natural uplift. "It feels like we got it across the whole record this time," said Kenny. "We push the production side to emphasise what the band is at the time. This time round we thought, 'F**k, this carries a different weight.' We want to point the finger at a few things; hold some people accountable, and ourselves accountable as well."