Gotts Street Park have shared ‘Some Birds Don’t Fly’, their first new music in three years, featuring British-Canadian songwriter Matt Maltese.
The Leeds trio, Josh, Joe and Tom, last released music on 2023’s debut album On The Inside, a record that established their analogue-rich soul interplay and instinct for intimate, warmly produced collaborations. ‘Some Birds Don’t Fly’ continues in that spirit: a languid, dusky piece of soul built around the trio’s playing and Maltese’s hushed, woozy vocal delivery.
The track came together naturally given existing relationships within the band. Josh had written with Maltese previously, and Joe played guitar on Maltese’s most recent album. “He came up to Leeds on a dark rainy Thursday in winter and ‘Some Birds Don’t Fly’ was the result,” the band have said. Lyrically, the song was shaped by Maltese’s own experience: “This song reflects on the life someone very close to me had, and the choices they had to make because of it,” he has said. “Sometimes the hand you get is just a bad hand. And the helplessness that brings for those around them is a difficult thing to accept. The notion of a bad hand in life made me think in turn of flightless birds.”
The single launches the band’s Somewhere Here World Tour, a 22-date international run that includes the inaugural London edition of Questlove and Black Thought’s Roots Picnic, Newport Jazz Festival and the Montreal International Jazz Festival. The tour closes at London’s Roundhouse on 25th November, their biggest headline show to date.
