Pic by Agata Hudomięt
One of the most important French bands playing post-hardcore, punk and screamo, Birds in Row, is returning to Poland to play shows in Warsaw (September 27th) and Poznań (September 28th). On this occasion, I spoke with Bart, the band’s vocalist and guitarist. Among other things, he told me whether he is already working on new material, how much room there is for experimentation in his music, and whether he thinks the world is changing for the better.
[MOŻESZ PRZECZYTAĆ TEN WYWIAD PO POLSKU]
Bartosz: It’s been 4 years since you released Gris Klein. What do you think about this record after that time?
Bart: We actually played for a first time in a year last weekend, so it was cool to play those songs again. I kinda feel like nothing has changed since these 4 years. The world is still very depressing, and the music is still helpful for us, and to some people in the crowd aswell. I guess the songs are still on point, which is kinda shame, because I wish the world’s became a better place since then. But it’s not the case.
And I just wanted to ask if you feel that the world has changed for a better since then…
No, I think it’s getting worse and worse, it’s inevitable, hard to change march of capitalism being in defensive mode because it’s dying. You have raising facism in Europe, everywhere in the world. Obviously it makes people uncomfortable, because they have to have opinion now, about the politics. It’s getting truer now – if you don’t express yourself, you’re just playing the game of oppression. It’s a difficult time to navigate I guess. I think everyone is making mistakes here and there, but I’m confident that there can be a good outcome at some point. I just hope it won’t be at a cost of millions of lives. Obviously when you start talking about politics today, you’ll at some point start talking about what’s happening in Palestine. A lot of people violently react to speaking about that topic, it’s a good illustration of world’s condition. The same as Palestine has always been a good illustration of persistence. And now this topic is also a good illustration of how the world’s divided.
It’s good that at least some artists aren’t afraid to talk about what’s happening in Palestine. Not like Ed Sheeran…
[Laughs] You’re the second person telling me about Ed Sheeran today! It’s very typical. It’s more controllable to say not say anything when you’re an artist or a public person, because you won’t be confronted by people who have different opinion. You can see that with Sheeran for example, and it’s just an example, because his music is shitty to me, so I don’t care about him, I’m not gona beat him up more than he’s already been beaten up. His speech is all about how he feels about it, and it’s a good illustration of how big artists and billionaires feel today, that it’s all about their feelings, not understanding that people are dying under their boots. It’s very typical for dying capitalism. There’s some kind of joy in it, but it’s very ugly, everything that happens right now. When you open your Instagram it’s dead people, and then cute kitties, then dead people, and some kids doing a dance, and dead people again. You can’t be insensitive about that. Except when you’re billionaire. Which I’m not.
Sadly.
Yeah, I’m not so sure about that. Don’t think I’d know what to do with all the money, besides giving it to others.
Gris Klein was created during covid, and we all remember what a dark time this was. Do you think AI might be our next big, let’s say concern?
It’s a hard question, because most people don’t know how AI is gonna look like in the future. Even engineers working on it are like “there’s 10% chance that it’s gonna kill us all”. To me it’s just another tool, another illustration of how capitalism is fucking us up. We don’t care about human context. If machine can do it better, we’ll go for machine. It’s very scary, because we’ve all seen sci-fi movies, like Terminator. We’re wondering if there’s gonna be shit like robot chasing me on motorcycle [Laughs] . I think there’s huge part of our brain that makes us think this way. But I’d say AI is not a problem, capitalism is. Anything that helps capitalism survive or give it more power over people is bad. AI can be used in medicine, giving incredible results, but it’s not how it’s gonna be used mainly. We’re also very critical about resources usage of AI, but the meat industry uses like 200 times more water than AI. Overall the main answer is: capitalism sucks, we should do something different, and that’s it. I’m not educated enough to teach people how to form a new society, I have my ideas, that’s for sure. But it’s huge problem, when money is more important than people, and productivity is more important than human contacts. So AI is scary, but it’s as scary as rest of society to me.
Let’s change topic. Are you working on any new stuff?
We haven’t been able to work on new songs yet, but we plan to do it at the end of the year. Because we have this new band called Pain Magazine, and we put out the record last october, we toured for a year with this record. And now it’s time to tour with Birds in Row, which we’ll start next week. We’ll be in Poland next week, I think… It’s cool that we get to tour, this will be a good starting point for writing new music.
Do you already have any vision of new record?
Not really, like for a moment we talked about setting a boundaries to how we wanna experiment, cause with every record we want to do something different, and we really want to bring new stuff, and to do that you have to experiment. So for a moment we talked about technical stuff, like how do we want to set up in the practise room so we can do this or that. In terms of music I can’t really tell. But in terms of lyrics it’s not gonna be happier than Gris Klein [Laughs].
And how much space for experiments do you think there is in hardcore?
I think you have all the space you need. For me it’s the two things. Do you wanna play hardcore in a way of a certain scene, like do you wanna be youth crew band or New York hardcore band, which is very traditional approach. But you can also be this band that brings like nu-metal to hardcore, and just be your own band, do your own thing. You can still be a part of the community, but you have your own sound. I guess we’re more into the second part. We come from punk hardcore scene, screamo and stuff like that, but I’ve never wanted to sound like Envy or Daïtro or all those bands that I love. Because I think I love them so much that I don’t want to replicate what they did. It’s different entity. I love Converge, but I wouldn’t want to be Converge. It’s really like you bringing up different things from the places, the sounds you like, you put it all in a pot and see what happens. We’re three different people in the band, and some others don’t even listen to hardcore anymore. It’s very interesting, the way they bring other stuff in. The cool thing about BiR is that we write everything together, it’s not like one person’s deciding for everyone.
I guess this means we can expect some experiments from you, right?
I can’t really tell. We kinda have the pressure to do a better record than previous one. It’s not like someone is telling us to, it’s ourselves vs ourselves. If people won’t like what we play, well it happens. It happened with all the records, some people are into first one, the others prefer second or third. I’m not concerned about that. If we have to play in front of 50 people instead of 500, than we it’s okay, we’ll just play our music, for the same reason as always. It’s a cool thing that we have this kind of freedom to do whatever we want to do, and not have the pressure because some people like this song and so we should record another song like that. We’re not really crowd pleasers, it helps being free. I believe that if people like Gris Klein better than new record, then they still have this record to listen to, it belongs to them. We are free to do whatever we want.
So freedoom is one of the most important values for a musician?
Yep. I don’t like bands who put up te same record over and over again. You’re like it’s another Immortal record, if we’re talking about metal, or Pennywise, if we talk about punk. I know what to expect. For example, have you listened to new Neurosis record? Recently one of the members got kicked out and they decided to stop the band. But then they put out the new record out of the blue, and it’s one of their best records.
What drives you the most to be creative, to write new stuff?
I think it’s just that when you’re passionate about music, it’s the part of you, and there’s nothing that could make you impeach your art. We have the chance to be the band that we’re today, we could’ve broken with Birds in Row, but I’d still be playing music and the other guys would still play aswell. It’s a way to put out your emotions in the songs, it’s also kind of therapy for us. You put all the griefs, deppresion, sorrow into the songs, then you sprinkle it with optimism, and when you sing it, you believe in it. I’m also a tattoo artist, and I love it, but I don’t have the same connection with it, as I do with music. I can cry listening to music, watching a band play, but I’ve never had this feeling in front of a painting or tattoo. It’s very important to play music for my personal balance.
You mentioned that you like to put pressure on yourselves. In that case do you have a record or maybe song that you’re particularly proud of?
Some of the old songs are still playable today. The three of us are really proud of Gris Klein, I think it’s the best record we’ve ever done. It was hard to put it out, we did it at the moment everything was expensive, we composed during covid, a lot of things happened around the band, that made it hard to put it out. It was a lot of blood, a lot of sweat, but we played it for the first time in a year last weekend and it felt magical. Those songs are really important to us. But we also love to play some old songs from We Already Lost The World, like I don’t dance or 15-38. But the Gris Klein is really at the top of the list. We set the bar high for ourselves. I’m not saying it’s like crazy important record for the industry or music itself, but it is for ourselves. We lived so many things with that record, it means so much to us in so many ways, even musically I think we pushed the boundaries further. And now we have to do something better than that! It’s always hard, but with this one it’s particularly, I hope we’ll manage!
You also mentioned that your music is helpful to you and your fans. How is it helpful for you?
When you create music, you put a lot of yourself into it. Hopes, fears, griefs, stuff like that. Sharing that with people every night on tour, and seeing that people connect with you through these songs, maybe by singing, dancing or talking about it after the show, that makes you feel like you’re a part of something, makes you feel you’re not isolated anymore. We’ve always wanted to talk about community and how important is that, also tried to develop community around the band. The most beautiful thing about what we do is that every night after the show we get to talk about the people that enjoyed the show or maybe enjoyed the record, or maybe the record helped them go through some shit. I don’t want to feel important, don’t think I’m more important than anyone else, but I like to feel like I’ve given something, because this scene, this music gave me so much, and so I like to feel that I’ve given something back. Those people that make us the band that we are, that give us opportunity to travel, to live from our music, the fact that we can actually give them something is like the minimum retribution from us, and it’s very important for me.
Could you recall any special moment shared with your fans, or maybe few of them?
There are lot of different ones. It’s very intense when people come to you and say something like “I’ve lost my father last year and your record helped me go through that” or “My life is shit, I hate my job, I’m very isolated, but I listen to your music every single morning before going to work, because it gives me hope, it gives me energy” and stuff like that. These are the things that happen very often. But I have this very clear memory of a show we played in Berlin, and I was talking to someone who said he lost his father, and he started crying, and he said that this specific song heldped him with his grief. I was then giving him a hug, turned my head around and saw Quentin, our bass player, hugging another dude who was crying at the same time. It might sound a bit corny, but just the fact that some men feel that they can cry during our shows makes me feel good, because it shows that people think it’s a safe space to experience their emotions. That’s one of memories that comes to me very often, I was like “What is going on with all the people crying”. Now it sounds kinda funny, but at the moment it was very emotional. I love this about our band – that we formed this kind of connection with people.
I’ve read at least two interviews with you, where Poland was mentioned. Do you have any sort of special kind of relationship with our country?
Poland was a part of our first ever european tour, and we have friends in there. Was asked about this in other interview (Bart had 4 other interviews the same day I talked with him – added by editor, Bartosz), how do I rate polish crowd etc. Polish people have big heart, and they really connect. It might be very cliche, but French people, we’re very latin, we can be dramatic, not as much as Italian or Spanish people, but we can be [Laughs]. We’re also very emotional. And first thing you see, when you visit eastern Europe, is that it doesn’t scream emotion, people here are very calm, sometimes even cold. But I do have a lot of friends in Poland, some even visited me in France, so yeah. I don’t know if it’s special connection, but there is definitely something in Poland, all the shows we played there were good, and I’ve always had good time in there. I remember playing Warsaw during independence day, I was very scared, because there were many nazis. And I remember some kids coming to the show, that were scared to come, because one of them was gay, the other one was Moroccan, stuff like that. It’s this kind of moments that taught me a lot about how people in Poland have a courage to do things, so yeah, Poles have big hearts. I really enjoy spending quality time with my friends from there. Poland is one of the reasons we do this tour, because we haven’t played there in a long time, when we used to play there every two months [Laughs].
An the last one. In interview from 2015 you’ve said, that there isn’t really a hardcore scene in France, it’s just bunch of people setting up hardcore shows. Has something changed since then?
I see what I’ve meant. At some point there was scene, then it died. Now it’s kinda better, there’s a revival of scremo scene, there are bands like despiteeverythingitsstillyou or Without Skin, and a lot of emo/screamo bands are popping up. But i still kinda feel like there are no connections. People are setting shows in Paris or Touluse, but there are no connections. But that might be because we’re less part of DIY scene, then we used too, maybe that’s why I don’t see it. But there are still cool things happening in France.