Official Biography
After forming in the fall of 2005, Vancouver indie rockers The Painted Birds have secured a loyal following throughout Canada. Their debut album, So Much For The Rain, was released independently in Canada in August of 2007, and in 2008 alone the band completed two tours of Western Canada, a promotional tour of Ontario, and two cross-Canada tours. The band has gained much recognition at many industry conferences and festivals in 2008, including Canadian Music Week, NXNE, the Sled Island Music Festival, the Western Canadian Music Awards, and the Nearly Famous Music Festival. During their travels, The Painted Birds have shared the stage with such critically-acclaimed bands as Hey Rosetta!, Mother Mother, Two Hours Traffic, The Marble Index, and State of Shock.
The band’s name is a nod to Jerzy Kosinski's 1965 novel, The Painted Bird. In Kosinski’s controversial book, a man paints a bird and returns it to its flock. The bird thinks that it’s going home, but the flock ends up killing it because they see it as an intruder. Although the allusion is rather gory and vivid, lead singer and guitarist Dominique Fricot believes that it rings particularly true today. “I think the issue is that the world is filled with many sick and twisted realities, like how people do shun their own when they have mingled with the ‘other’,” he says.
That is, in many ways, the essence of the words behind the captivating melodies of the Painted Birds, tackling issues that people often shy away from, particularly when they deal with things that many are not ready to admit or talk about, such as hatred or fear, or the dead and perversion. Those may not all be dinner-table topics, but they are issues that as artists, The Painted Birds believe they should give expression to, however painful.
“I think as artists we have to bring to light what hits us way down deep, because that's how we can get past it,” explains Fricot. It’s not surprising then that the very first song that Fricot wrote was about the death of his parents, a topic he was unable to tackle otherwise. Today, and many songs later, he continues to deal in his music with topics that people typically feel the need to keep hidden.
The Painted Birds have a distinct sound that is emotionally intense, rhythmically dynamic, and melodically rich. The fusion of Fricot's voice with Shawn Berke’s melody-driven bass lines and Josh McNorton's effects-laden guitar keeps the listener interested in each part of the song, while the strong vocal melodies keep them humming the tune long after it has finished.
2009 has started off as an incredibly busy year for the band, as they showcased at Canadian Music Week and JunoFest and made their first appearance south of the border at the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas. Currently, they are writing and demoing songs for their second album.
Click here to view The Painted Birds' one sheet
