Get to know The Hunting Birds ahead of their debut EP launch this Saturday

The Hunting Birds are a WA-based five-piece who've been bringing their special blend of folk/pop/indie/rock sounds to audiences for the past few years, over that time releasing a few singles and playing a heap of shows. This week sees the release of the culmination of these past few years with their debut EP, In Its Nature, an epic collection of music that showcases the group's diverse sounds underpinned with a warm, powerful honesty that resonates through each of the five tracks.

Ahead of their EP launch this Saturday at Jack Rabbit Slim's, a show at Settlers Tavern the following Friday and WAMFest Saturday 3 November, we got to know 'em a little better courtesy of frontwoman Kendra Fewster:

Tell us about yourselves?

We’re a folk/rock/pop five piece band based in Fremantle WA that met through university studies. Connor and myself had a mutual love of folk music and began singing together - soon after Connor asked me to join a band he was putting together and we’ve pretty much lived and breathed by it since. In the last few years we’ve jumped on Falls Music & Arts Festival and Bluesfest Byron Bay along with supporting artists such as The Lumineers and Newton Faulkner - keeping us busy up until knuckling down to produce our debut EP, In Its Nature.

What kinda tunes we talkin’?

We’re a folk/rock five piece band that tends to fly to the very barriers of our genre in almost any way it can stretch itself. Our songs can vary from super-upbeat pop-influenced numbers to hard hitting quirky numbers such as Burn This House Down. It's a mission almost always to have a wide variety of warmth, fluidity and energy in the songs we perform. Having two songwriters allows for different perspective.

Production/writing process:

Our writing process has occurred mostly from workshopping songs that Connor or myself have written. My writing process generally start with a feeling and from that I find my melody from grouped chords - I’ve never been great at writing lyrics before I have a feel of the song, so for me that part comes after I have my base idea. Generally when Connor and I write together it does take more time. We tend to both take on a role, either melody or lyrics and flow from there adding in ideas to bounce off or challenge one another.

Once the songs been written structurally and more often than not lyrically - we take it to the band and find our feet in a wave of sound we feel suits the song. We will each find our parts, little embellishments and dynamics from there.

Can you tell us about your new EP, In Its Nature?

In Its Nature seems like a long time coming for us. After releasing three singles over the years, finally putting together a handful of songs to share with everyone is collectively something we’ve wanted to do for a long time. This EP - I can definitely say shines a light on the diversity of our sound. We have a collection of some new tracks and some of our very first songs that we ever played as a band such as Naive Eyes and Here We Go. Songs we’ve wanted to record for a while and it was great to have been able work on them with Joel Quartermain and Andy Lawson. They challenged us in the studio to give the songs a new perspective, which became a massive learning curve to the production side of creating a record.

The title of the EP actually revealed itself to us through an encounter I’d had with a barn owl driving home late one night while listening to the raw song files for the EP. I live on property about an hour out of Perth and was staring at the road ahead. Then out from the side of my view a white barn owl now after some research flew down onto the road right beside my car as I drove past and picked up a mouse running across the road. Whether it was sheer shock of seeing an owl or the fact it’d just flew off with its small victory of a meal, I’d uncovered our EP title. Every living organism only does what is within its nature - we are programmed to perceive the world only in the way our nature prohibits us to and that is where we all have a likeness to an owl. We express through this EP a range of things that our nature allows us, just as an that owl hunts within the confine of its own.

Any shows coming up?

We will be launching our debut EP at a show at Jack Rabbit Slim's on the 27th of October with supports from pals These Winter Nights and Chelsea Cullen.

What’s the rest of the year have in store?

After launching the EP we will be getting back out there with some shows down south and around town. We have been quiet in the lead up to the release and have become very eager to get back out there and play music to an audience again!

Where can we hear more of your music?

Spotify, iTunes, Soundcloud, YouTube.

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