The Birds of Avalon Q&A

Indie upstarts The Birds of Avalon have a fantastic vintage sound to their songs.

The fact that their latest Uncanny Valley was recorded in a makeshift basement studio on a classic 16 track tape machine and some other borrowed equipment, help add to the classic DIY feel of the songs. In a matter of days, the band had a new album to its growing catalogue.

The group formed in 2007, when guitarists (and husband and wife) Cheetie Kumar and Paul Siler left the group Cherrie Valance and hooked up with singer Craig Tilley, bassist David Mueller and drummer Scott Nurkin. Christened the Birds of Avalon, the Raleigh band went to work on their debut Bazaar, Bazaar. They’ve spent the past couple of years opening for bands like Ted Leo, The Raconteurs and The Flaming Lips, continuing to put out more songs along the way.

Kumar was kind enough to answer a few questions before heading back out on the road again. So what's the music scene in Raleigh like now?

Well there seems to be no shortage of good bands around here, it’s kind of hard to keep track! Everything from Bowebirds and Megafaun to Double Negative and the reformed Polvo- it’s pretty diverse. Right now, though there are a few good venues, there isn’t one place that coheres to independent music in Raleigh. We had a wonderful venue here for several years, called Kings (which was co-owned by Paul from Birds of Avalon) but during the downtown “building/ development” boom of a few years ago, the building was torn down to build, what else, a parking deck! So things are spread out to some extent- more house shows and oddball nights at otherwise fairly mainstream venues.

How would you compare Uncanny Valley to the first record?

Aside from the actual recording of it, I think we’re getting better at self-editing and conveying one idea in each song as opposed to some of the more complex arrangements on the songs on Bazaar Bazaar. On the new record, the songwriting is less traditional - non-vocal “choruses”, etc… and we were more focused on getting interesting sounds rather than working too hard on guitar parts. The way we made this album had a lot to do with it too. It was all written and recorded in three weeks in our basement on a 3M 16 track tape machine we borrowed from Mitch Easter. Actually, some of Bazaar Bazaar was recorded on that same machine, but done in the studio. The first album was kind of a compilation of some of our very first songs and it was recorded in a few sessions over several months. Following the release of that in ’07, we toured pretty heavily and then made the very quick EP, Outer Upper Inner, early last year. It was recorded and mixed in five days and done entirely on 4-track tape with not many overdubs. It was kind of an experiment to see if a record could still be made like it was 1968. When we recorded Uncanny Valley it was really helpful to have that experience to draw from in keeping things spontaneous and not getting too bogged down on one thing.

It seems like you went from release the first record, straight on the road, to releasing this one. Did you have any significant time off to write and record or was most of it done on the road?

Actually, you might be thinking about the other record we recorded in December/January, which wasn’t released. After the first album, we released an EP in March of last year and toured for four solid months supporting it. We took a few weeks off and proceeded to write a bunch of songs, recorded an album and then wrote and recorded another album right after that. The second batch is Uncanny Valley, the first batch will be dealt with in the future.

How different were the experiences recording the two records?

The first recording was done at Mitch’s wonderful Fidelitorium studio. It was much more of a traditional process - we wrote all the songs, went into the studio and tracked (on a 24 track machine) for about 10 days and mixed in about a week. That record is a pretty dense record that somehow didn’t make sense to release in the summer. Uncanny Valley was almost the opposite- most of the songs were written as they were being recorded and it was all recorded at home on a 16-track tape machine. We mixed at Fidelitorium very quickly and kept the recording fairly simple, only using 15 of the 16 tracks.

Is there a general theme to the songs on Uncanny Valley?

A lot of the songs turned out to be about disorientation and have a foreboding quality to them. We really didn’t set out to do this deliberately, but I guess we must have been in a dark mindset when we wrote it! The title came after the record was already done- inspired by a phenomenon in which human beings become more unsettled by robots or other human facsimiles in direct proportion to how lifelike they appear. This seemed to sum up the impression we were trying to conjure- where things aren’t exactly how they might appear; being unsettled in a seemingly normal situation.

You've toured with some amazing bands. Have you learned anything helpful from any of the musicians you've toured with recently?

We HAVE been really fortunate to play with awesome bands- all of whom are inspiring in different ways. So even though we aren’t gonna have confetti cannons anytime soon, it was amazing to see how much work goes into making every Flaming Lips show a multi-sensory experience. I also loved seeing all the cool guitar effects Jack White (on the Raconteurs tour) and Steven McBean (on the Black Mountain tour) had.

What's next for the band?

We’re actually leaving for a 10 day tour of the Northeast in about two hours! We’ll be doing dates through early fall while we write and record some more songs hopefully we’ll be putting a new album out sometime soon!

Anything else you want to add?

I think you covered it! Thanks!