Following the announcement of the upcoming release of their fourth studio album Magpie, Vancouver-based band Peach Pit have announced details of the European and UK dates of The Magpie Tour, which includes a show in the3Olympia Theatre on 7th April 2025.
Tickets from €29.90 including booking fees on sale Friday 18th October at 9AM
The title track is out today, accompanied by an action packed new video, directed by frequent collaborator Lester Lyons-Hookham.
The Vancouver quartet – Neil Smith [vocals] , Chris Vanderkooy [guitar], Peter Wilton [bass] and Mikey Pascuzzi [drums] – is indeed in fine form on the new single “Magpie,” for which they conjured a character “who lives in the gutter, who’s always boozing and chasing a high and feels like he’s got his shit together because they’ll still let him sit at the strip club bar,” per Smith, who was messing around atop a drum beat when he wrote the verse. “In some ways it’s who I felt I might end up like if I never quit drinking. I had two paths ahead of me in life: one good and one bad. The song ended up a Wings-esque, Paul McCartney rock song, or, our take on one at least.”
The 11 songs on Magpie did not come easily, as Peach Pit initially went into the studio in the spring of 2023 with very few songs and plans to make a record on the fly – (having just watched The Beatles documentary Get Back). “Sheepishly, we began to realize it wasn’t that simple unless you’re actually The Beatles, and we decided to spend more time writing,” admits Peach Pit vocalist/guitarist Neil Smith. By the fall, when Vancouver was getting cold again and Peach Pit’s first tour of Australia was fast approaching, the album was nearly ready to be recorded, minus a few key finishing touches.
“As Vancouver was slipping into winter, Melbourne was heading into summer and the birds were everywhere,” Smith recalls. “It was the magpies that caught my attention. I’m not sure what it was about them – maybe it was just the name that I liked.” Inspired back at home by an old poem about superstitions surrounding the bird in question, and how different numbers of them are good or bad omens, Smith found connective tissue with the material already written and the new ideas rattling around in his brain.
“I liked the idea that the magpie is neither good nor bad,” he says. “Or, maybe it’s both – it just depends on how many you find. It reminded me of the record we were trying to make – the days of doubt after strumming the same four chords without a good melody, followed by the days of writing something worthwhile and biking home on a high. Magpie symbolizes the heartbreak that led to many of the songs we were writing, as well as the new love that inspired the others. The year it had taken to make Magpie had been full of ups and downs – constantly changing and leaving the good for the bad and the bad for the good, just like the songs on the record.”
Magpie is the follow-up to 2022’s From 2 to 3, which features fan favorites “Give Up Baby Go” and “Up Granville”.