“Some people dance at our shows, some are moved to tears”: Inside the emotional musical world of Exploring Birdsong

Despite the furnace-like conditions outside, Exploring Birdsong have rocked up to talk to K! in snazzy brown suits. They’ve worn these in every promotional video and photo for their debut album, Every House We Built, but we couldn’t have anticipated them extending it just this far, and certainly not when it’s so disgustingly hot.

“We’ve committed to the bit!” drummer Matt Harrison says, sat shoulder to shoulder with vocalist Lynsey Ward and bassist Jonny Knight in their Airbnb in Milton Keynes, in front of a fan they nickname “the fourth member of Exploring Birdsong.” Ironically, within about 10 minutes, the heat gets too much and he wriggles out of his blazer.

“Sorry,” Matt says. “My back is so wet!” Lynsey and Jonny fare better, impressively keeping their jackets on for the entirety of our time together.

It was Matt himself who fell upon the idea for these rather unique costumes, inspired by a photo he saw after of a man in an ‘80s-style estate agent suit posing in front of a car. Thinking it looked cool, he filed it in the back of his mind as a concept to unearth when the moment called for it. As the Merseyside trio got to writing Every House We Built, he noticed how often images relating to houses came up: buildings, doors, windows. Brick by brick and chord by chord, the concept built itself and the estate agent look slotted right in.

“We’re not terribly serious people, but it felt like something that we could get away with,” he explains. “We've done the whole video shoot in a warehouse, rocking out and wearing black, and the photo shoots in the forest. We’ve done all that. We like to see thought and care, and a deliberate effort to make the thing wider than just 12 songs on Spotify. We wanted to try and build the world as much as we could.”

Every House We Built is an album as layered as it is chameleonic, a distillation of a broad spectrum of influences from pop to prog into an expansive, shapeshifting sound. There’s swirling piano, big sticky choruses, even a strong twang of ‘80s pop in places, and more than one plunge into a breakdown. The odd part is that they’ve made this possible despite the unique quirk of being a rock band with no guitarist in their ranks.

“I feel really privileged that I'm in a band where we’re not having to worry about how something will work with guitars,” says Jonny. “It looks like a limit that we're guitarless, but it actually frees you up, because in a way we can just use anything. The number of instruments on this album, both real and with samples and arrangements is huge, and that's because we feel like there's actually quite a lot of freedom that comes from that.”

Every House We Built’s other defining quality is its rich tapestry of emotion and experience. The connecting thread through all of these songs is relationships, whether familial, friendly, or romantic, as common, essential and foundational to human existence as the roofs over our heads. It’s a photo album of universal journeys, through love and loss, grief and absence, but the lines between whose story is whose on the album have been thoroughly blurred.

Because Jonny, Matt and Lynsey have experienced so much together in the years since they met in their university days at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, their individual experiences now feel like collective ones. After all, the power of connection and empathy mean that when a friend goes through something, you’re pulled along on that journey with them, absorbing the distant shockwaves of their emotions.

“We’re bringing things from our lives as individuals,” says Lynsey, “but we went through them together. We could get into whether that’s healthy, but the cornerstone of our friendship is to be in each other’s pockets a bit.”

Although Lynsey has already made a name of herself as part of backing vocal trio Espera – best known for performing with Sleep Token – Exploring Birdsong’s structure as a band is not a frontwoman-and-two-bandmates type situation. Every corner of the triangle is just as vital as the others, and their friendship is a shatterproof foundation of their artistry. After all, there’s a reason why their album is titled Every House We Built, and it wouldn’t be what it is without those bonds.

“There are things on this album that I couldn't have brought to a band unless I was in a band with my best mates,” says Jonny.

They laugh with each other often, even over the course of the interview, with a conspiratorial spirit between them. At some point or another, they’ve all played therapist to each other and they’ve all been the person who’s emotionally spinning out and needs dragging back to shore.

“In broad strokes, I think you’re the optimist,” says Lynsey, turning to Jonny. “You’ll find the good in any situation we’re in. You,” she continues, turning to Matt, “are quite practically minded, so you’ll find the solution to a problem. You’ll be stressed in the moment, but you will find it.”

“You’re more pessimistic, in the sense of ‘If this happens, we’re fucked,” Matt returns. “But then, you need the realism.”

“I think from that sometimes comes the solution, in a way,” adds Jonny. “’If this happens, we're screwed, from there, how do we avoid that?’ There’s a form of like pragmatism and practicality that comes from that as well.”

That open-hearted candour has drawn in a growing legion of fans. They congregate online on Discord and sell out shows in a heartbeat, first the band’s debut headline shows at St Pancras Old Church and tickets for their September tour are flying too. Their shows are a place of emotional exchange, the divide between band and fan melting away because they’re all so connected by whatever they’re feeling.

“We've seen people dancing at our shows and people who have been moved to tears,” says Lynsey. “To some people that might be quite private, so to have shown that to us right in front of us, it feels right to reciprocate, and it feels right to be open with them, just as they are with us.

“I’ve likened it to being on a date with somebody where they don't ask questions and you’re talking at them and they don't give you anything back. That's weird. That's not how conversation works,” she continues. “So why would we do that? We want to be personable to people; there is no great level of mystery to who we are and it doesn't make sense for there to be either. We may as well just tell people straight up who we are, and if they don't like that, then we'll get them on the next record!”

Every House We Built is out now via Long Branch.

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