The third full-length release from Chicago's Paper Arrows. If you love pop bands from the 1980s and early 1990s...there's a good chance you will fall in love with this band's super catchy pure pop sound. The guys in Paper Arrows aren't trying to push boundaries or make demands of their listeners. These tunes were created for pure entertainment. The arrangements are simple, allowing the listener to focus on the vocal melodies and lyrics. Because we only received a CD-R we'll keep this short. Ten smooth hummable tracks here including "Lonesome Sound," "Still Got You," and "Dirty Engine." Recommended for fans of The Shoes.
Remember the 80s, back when pop bands played real instruments and flavored their sounds with keyboards? This Chicago quartet does, and it has cranked out ten gems that take me back to high school. More than that, though, Paper Arrows incorporate a few more recent tends into their mix. There are nods to americana, that whole 90s "modern rock" thing and a few of the better singer-songwriters of the past 20 years. Indeed, while the use of piano and organ put something of a date stamp on the overall sound, Paper Arrows exist in a timeless zone. One where good music is appreciated without labels. Oh, hell, why get sanctimonious. This album is anything but. Chock full of joy, reminiscence and muscular contemplation, there's plenty here to love. In the end, the songs are the stars. And they sure are.
Much of Paper Arrows' musical output sounds scarred by some great tragedy. "Everything dear disappears," band founder Joe Goodkin sings amid the wreckage of "Things We Would Rather Lose," a gorgeous heartbreaker of a tune that finds him strolling around falling skyscrapers with the same broken, emotionally detached aura that Bill Murray projects throughout "Lost in Translation."
"Our first album, 'Look Alive,' wasn't even meant to be released as a proper product," says the 33-year-old Goodkin, reached by telephone at his North Center home in early December. "It was just something I made entirely selfishly as therapy. But once that was out and people responded to it, it kind of told me that you have to learn to be comfortable with putting those things out there."
It's true that the singer, who derives all of his material from his own experiences ("I admire people who can write fiction songs, but I haven't gotten to that point," he says), has developed a comfort level with allowing listeners to share in his misery.
That's part of what makes the forthcoming "In the Morning" — which the band will make available at the final show of its Schubas residency before the official release early next year — such an interesting experiment. Much of the album was written over summer 2009, when Goodkin was courting his now-wife — an incredibly joyous period in his life, "I think that was a huge personal corner to turn," Goodkin says of the relationship. "It put a more positive spin on things." This more upbeat approach is reflected in the album's title, which can be taken literally (the guitarist did most of the writing shortly after waking about 5 a.m.) or metaphorically (referencing the first signs of contentment after countless lonely nights).
It's also, for all intents and purposes, the first proper full-band effort. Although Jay Marino (bass) and Darren Garvey (drums, organ) contributed greatly to the first two Paper Arrows albums, their job at the time was largely to add heft to Goodkin's skeletal demos. This time around, the three musicians gathered for more extensive rehearsals, working out arrangements and making adjustments right up until they entered the studio for three days of recording. Goodkin says that a bulk of the record is the sound of the three players together in a room, and the resulting tunes are all the more vital for it.
Goodkin, who was born and raised in the suburbs, started playing guitar in the third grade, first experimenting with stripped-down Beatles covers before discovering the blues — a form, he says, that "helped me find my voice on the instrument." An interesting choice of words, to be sure, because Paper Arrows' indie rock excursions sound miles removed from traditional 12-bar blues.
"At its root, the blues is about confronting pain and suffering through music," says Goodkin, delving further into the form's influence on his artistic development. "You can take the worst thing that can happen to you on a personal level — 'My woman left me,' 'My dog got run over' — and make a song out of it."
He added: "I think — and this isn't a unique thought — a lot of great art comes out of the need to express pain and anguish. If you funnel those feelings and emotions into a song, it can take a lot of that pain away. And hopefully it connects with people too."
Paper Arrows are a fresh alt/rock band from Chicago doing things right! Telling stories with clarity and using the instrumentation to evoke rich emotion is their strong suit (and when it comes to writing music, is there really anything else?) Songs like Things We Would Rather Lose capture the vibe of roots rock and singable americana, whereas Til I Couldn't Cry slows things down in a perfect piano led gospel rock track. Its an intimate track that's polished enough for pop-appeal, but raw enough that Goodkin's vocals rip to the heart, and when he jumps to falsetto all is well in the world. On One More Quiet Song, the band brings in The Cosmic Unity for horn support and adds a totally different element to the band's sound - a sort of Mighty Mighty Boss Tones meets Counting Crows feel. And as the album comes to rest with Explosions Below, they again create an acoustic Adam Duritzy vibe as Goodkin's vocals passionately paint vivid imagery as he wails..."the last thing that she gave me!" Buy this album, see them live, thank me later.
Paper Arrows play some pretty amazing aural tricks - one moment they evoke Jack Joseph Puig-produced Canadian band Big Wreck with its thundering 22" kick and triple amped hollow body guitars, the next lead singer Joe Goodkin sounds like the love child of Neil Young and Thom Yorke. But somehow the band manages to avoid the amateurish dilemma of failing to lock onto an identifiable sound; if something binds the widely varied nature of Paper Arrows songs it’s the open-sounding, live-feeling and beautifully recorded production and performance. They could stand head-to-head with Jason Falkner, Goo Goo Dolls, Jellyfish and never risk getting lumped in with overly-precious mandatory ballads by Nickelback. There is something too honest and raw in their latest recordings that include everything from 80’s synths to glockenspiel, player piano to harmonium and yet feel like the main ingredient is lots and lots of moving air - expansive and organic, rootsy and totally contemporary, this is gorgeously realized stuff indeed.