Paper Route

The lushness and sprawl of Coldplay, the experimental electronica of later period Radiohead and the neo-nu wave of The Postal Service is adequately reinterpreted by Nashville's Paper Route on Absence, their major label debut. Paper Route represent the new crest of college rock, which saw its zenith in the 1990s, but a band like Paper Route reminds musicologists of the period when indie bands were the norm more often than the exception.

The richness of Absence cannot be underscored. Simple rock n' roll isn't what Paper Route is looking to achieve. The band invites the listener to sift through a multitude of ambient layers and sounds, all of which congeal in a dense yet gorgeous selection of songs. It’s all kicked off by “Enemy Among Us,” which is dangerously dream haunting. There’s somewhat of a somber tone and mood on Absence, and it's as though the band was reared in the gray industrial towns deep in England and inspired by a bleak environment. While Nashville is the very capitol of Americana and country music, not much of that influence is detectable on Absence; but it's not like Paper Route are betraying their roots. There's no rule that says bands from Nashville need to dabble solely in country.

Rather, there’s an appreciation for Brit pop and Brit rock, along with an appreciation for fertile instrumentation and sample-driven extras. Texture is the keyset of key elements on “Wish,” the stunning “Carousel” and “Tiger Teeth,” all of which you could cycle through forty times and still walk away discovering something you hadn't noticed or quite comprehended the previous thirty nine times. It’s a constantly renewable source of sonic enjoyment and there’s so many parts on Absence that it begs an unanswerable question: How the hell do Paper Route remember how to play these songs live? There’s that much occurring on the space of the record, but it’s so neatly packaged that you’ll never become lost in the maze of melodic opulence.

Absence is painfully pretty, tugging at those oh-so-delicate heart strings with strong fingers. There’s a ripple of gentle heartache that comes and goes throughout the album.

— Amy Sciarretto
04.29.09

Taking their cues from '80s synth pop, new wave, and the bedroom electronica of the Postal Service, Paper Route make their full-length debut with Absence, an album whose quiet grandeur is strikingly reminiscent of Stars of Track and Field's Centuries Before Love and War. At its strongest, Paper Route's twittering, textured music is both melodically and structurally engaging, its riffs flanked by electronic blips and speaker-to-speaker pans that help widen the band's palette. Lead-off track "Enemy Among Us" is one of the album's strongest, a nuanced fusion of piano, echoing percussion, and harmonized vocals that aptly jumpstarts Absence despite its midtempo gait. Elsewhere, the band peppers the track list with speedy laptop anthems, from "Last Time" (whose stadium-sized guitars give way to a disjointed rhythmic bridge) to the gauzy soundscapes of "Carousel." Tracks like "Be Healed" are too overzealous in their retro atmospherics, however, with vocalists J.T. Daly and Andy Smith attempting a seductive, Prince-styled falsetto that ends up sounding more karaoke than commanding. Similar missteps plague "Gutter" and "Dance on Our Graves," the latter of which features entire choruses sung in fervent falsetto, but Absence's strengths far outweigh those errors, making this album an adequate destination for fans of technicolor, atmospheric pop. ~ Andrew Leahey, All Music Guide