There is this little hide-out in the historical garden at the back of the Hofburg, behind the glasshouse with palms and butterflies, close to the duck pond and just a stone-throw away from the cupreous statue of Emperor Franz Joseph. Paper Bird ensconces herself behind serried fir branches to perform – surrounded by lush greenery – “Garden Garden”. Playing balladesque and simple melodies Anna Kohlweis does a metaphorical, magical story-telling. The Viennese artist tinkers a whole new universe with her music, where humans and animals have reversed roles, where the characters fall out of contemporary zoological catalogs (the second album is entitled with the onomatopoetic word “Cryptozoology”) and emotions are packed into sonorous origami patterns (as the artist-name already suggests and what she used for the videoclip “None Of The Above”) that flash upon the inner eye. With her love for the details, her spiritedness of leaving the instrument aside to carry on the song just with her voice and her fond creating of her own quirky universe (she even does the illustration for her albums and fanzines), Paper Bird attracts various people. A boy with a red jelly bag cap bops around and two parking attendants get sceptical about our little hide-out. If they had caught the flair of our playful fairytale-setting, they would not have suspected us of doing drugs.

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