Bird Goes Electric

Pushing yourself to do new things, creatively, can be challenging, but as Esme Patterson — one of the vocalists in the Baroque indie folk-pop group Paper Bird — can attest, such growth and change are necessary. The band’s fourth album, 2013’s Rooms, is proof.

“It’s an organic evolution of our sound,” she says. “We’ve been together as a band for almost eight years now. Naturally, our personal and musical interests are going to change over time. I think our music reflects the evolution of each of us as people.”

While the band has employed an engaging brand of roots music since its inception, there is an ebullience and a new kind of energy on Rooms that separates it from previous releases. “As I Am,” for example, starts off as a slow acoustic ditty before — like a train getting started — it begins to rumble along at a lively clip, and “Blood & Bones” has a heavy country influence that is boosted by electric guitar. That last detail is also indicative of what is to come, as the band is tracking demos for their next record.

“We’re amplified and electrified now,” Patterson laughs. “We are adding a keyboard to our recordings, we’re switching over to electric bass rather than upright bass in a lot of situations and we’ve got a drummer now, so the songs that are coming out of the group right now are a lot more modern sounding. It’s a lot of fun to experiment with electric textures, so we’re [enjoying] that right now.”

Paper Bird plays with The Americans 9:30 pm Friday, March 21, at Sam Bond’s; $8.

A Note From the Publisher

Dear Readers,

The last two years have been some of the hardest in Eugene Weekly’s 43 years. There were moments when keeping the paper alive felt uncertain. And yet, here we are — still publishing, still investigating, still showing up every week.

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Not just because of financial support (though that matters enormously), but because of the emails, notes, conversations, encouragement and ideas you shared along the way. You reminded us why this paper exists and who it’s for.

Listening to readers has always been at the heart of Eugene Weekly. This year, that meant launching our popular weekly Activist Alert column, after many of you told us there was no single, reliable place to find information about rallies, meetings and ways to get involved. You asked. We responded.

We’ve also continued to deepen the coverage that sets Eugene Weekly apart, including our in-depth reporting on local real estate development through Bricks & Mortar — digging into what’s being built, who’s behind it and how those decisions shape our community.

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