“Empty House“
from the EP Are We All Forgotten
2008
iTunes
From Low Altitude Records comes Paper Route’s new album Are We All Forgotten, an ambient-pop/prog rock outfit whose glassy soundscapes shimmer with a gentleness that is reflective of Great Northern and Lost Ocean’s music and soars into a comet-infested extravaganza relatable to Hundred Year Storm. The band’s five-track record is a sample of their cosmic dimensioned rock. It’s dreamy and ethereal to the touch and does wonders to liberate the senses like a stress relieving tonic.
Some aspects of the band’s music may remind fans of the shoegazy atmospherics of ’80s bands like The Cure, Pink Floyd, and Joy Division in tracks like “American Clouds” and the title track, but reviving old templates does not seem to be the objective of Paper Route. They take steps into present day chord formations, intonations, and imaginary cosmic-bunkered escapes. Songs like “You Kill Me,” “Empty House,“ and “Waiting for the Final Leaf to Fall” have a translucent density that makes them appear bushy, yet easy to put your hand right through it like a mind-boggling sonic illusion.
Paper Route’s album has mass appeal in world music markets in ways that bands like Pink Floyd, The Cure, and Joy Division had. It takes the listener into the cosmos, a trance-like ethereal dimension that has no walls, only molecular floatations filled with bushy cloud clusters that appease the recesses of the mind. The album is like one long drifting dream that traverses across landscapes that are aurally fluffy and soft and cooling on the senses.