San Francisco’s Tom Conneely & Birds of Paradise capture love’s simple pleasures in the jangling “I Know It,” a wistful reverie dwelling in nostalgia’s tender embrace and the latest single taken off their upcoming sophomore album, ‘New Kind Palace.’
Stream: “I Know It” – Tom Conneely & Birds of Paradise
Grand gestures may make for great stories and good tv, but ultimately, love is about the little things.
And when that love is lost, it’s those little things we miss the most – whether it’s the way it felt to lock eyes with that special someone, or how their smile alone could send your spirit soaring sky-high. San Francisco’s Tom Conneely & Birds of Paradise capture love’s simple pleasures in their new single “I Know It,” a wistful reverie dwelling in nostalgia’s tender embrace.
Through jangling guitars and soft, easy melodies, the band dive into familiar territory – post-breakup heartache and longing – with a refreshingly upbeat sound and an endearing attitude.
There was a moment,
love felt like breathing
There was a moment
our stars aligned
Lost in the sun with you
All of the time
I jingle jangle
down those desert roads
Your crooked smile in my door
And then it happened,
something happened
Wildfire in your eyes
I know it, I know it
You know it too
I feel it, I feel it
You feel it too
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “I Know It,” Tom Conneely & Birds of Paradise’s first song of the year and the lead single off their upcoming sophomore album, New Kind Palace (out March 21, 2025 via Kestrel Records). The California rock band’s first single in 1.5 years (the Sun Child EP released in September 2023) serves as a sunny (with a touch of clouds) reintroduction to the trio of Tom Conneely, Alois Cerbu, and Tom Proulx.
Buoyant and bittersweet – with an emphasis on the sweet – “I Know It” looks back fondly on a loving relationship that came and went too soon. Flowing gently from end to end, the song embodies the beauty, the magic, and the power of simplicity. With just three repeating chords, the band hit home with surprising grace and force, speaking to intimate and relatable emotions and a near-universal human experience.
“‘I Know It’ is a song that has been gestating and changing, rewriting and reshaping itself over the course of the last few years,” Conneely tells Atwood Magazine. “Initially, I wrote this and song and released it with my prior band, Idle Joy, although there are not many similarities between the two versions at this point. The older version was cool, rough and shaky, sort of like the band. As that project ended and I kept shedding new songs and ideas, the chorus always kept popping up in my head, even as the rest of the song faded.”
“About a year or so ago, my good friend Tom Proulx and I were writing a lot of songs together, or at least using one another as sounding boards for different lyrics and different ideas. Tom made me play simpler and better. Not a lot of fancy changes, usually just a few chords, and in that process, ‘I Know It’ reshaped itself into a droning, three chord song about love lost. Essentially, the song is composed of simple, true lines pulled from each of our memories.”
“Recording this tune was really indicative of how we recorded almost all of the songs on New Kind Palace. It started, obviously, with a Casio keytar that has a bunch of preset beats and exactly three ‘fill buttons’ that were only used to indicate section changes. That beat was tracked directly into my cassette recorder, as I hummed along, generally keeping tabs on where the different sections were with the aforementioned fill buttons. After that I tracked a few different acoustic guitars and eventually took the stereo outs of the cassette and bounced them to a higher fidelity reel-to-reel, where we finished the bass and other parts. Like a lot of the music we’ve been writing, Alois Cerbu and myself wanted to keep the drone-like qualities of the Casio beats, and allow that to be a sort of foundation for harmonies and as many crazy sounds and melodies as we could pack in. My favorite part of the entire song still is the intro and the sort of ‘breakdown’ halfway through where Alois ran the beat and chords through a granular synthesizer software that he wrote.”
“This tune took many iterations to finally find its footing, and I’m really proud of it. Not to say that it won’t change again, but at least for now I think we’re leaving it in a pretty good spot.”
“I Know It” is a reminder that simple is good – both in music, and in love.
Stream Tom Conneely & Birds of Paradise’s new single exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and stay tuned from more from the San Francisco trio as they continue to unveil their sophomore album: New Kind Palace is out March 21, 2025 via Kestrel Records!
Deep dark reds and pearly blues
Deep dark reds and pearly blues
Deep dark reds and pearly blues
All of the time
I know it, I know it
You know it too
I feel it, I feel it
You feel it too
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:: connect with Tom Conneely & Birds of Paradise here ::
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Stream: “I Know It” – Tom Conneely & Birds of Paradise
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© Kory Thibeault
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