Dusty dreams of Australiana, as The Paper Kites dig down deep in the soul.

MOOD OF THE MOMENT

Every so often there comes along a band and album that just seem to hit the mood of the moment. Often not their first, as is the case for this, as it is the Melbourne band’s 7th. That’s Melbourne, NSW, I should add, not the Derbyshire market town. Variously described, since their 2010 debut, as rock, folk or country, generally it is that A word they get categorised as. Which isn’t Australiana, even if it could or should be. A comparison that used to work for me, was of a mellower and more acoustically bent Walkabouts. Does it still apply?

A WARM DIP

Well, as the set begins, it is indeed mellow, a warm dip of a voice and a softly strummed guitar being the first sounds you hear. Sam Bentley is the lead singer, and, if his tone tends to the melancholic, that suits fine the songs, largely written by David Powys. Morning Gum, that first song, is a request, around trying to keep the outside world, and its darkness, outside of a relationship. As it progresses, so Powys’ banjo flickers into the mix, with muted keyboards and drums the next to arrive. After their last album, a live album, where the band were augmented by additional musicians, this time it is only the key 5 members present, the songs all played live in the studio. And when you realise that studio is a room at the outback farm of a friend, it all makes sense of the sound.

Alongside Bentley and Powys, Christina Lacy, Josh Bentley and Sam Rasmussen make up the Paper Kites, that line-up a constant since 2010. Lacy, like Sam Bentley, plays guitar and keyboards, and provides the elegant harmony backing vocals. Powys provides, as well as banjo, guitar and lap steel, with the other Bentley on drums and Rasmussen on bass.

DEGREES OF DESOLATION

Change Of The Wind is nominally more upbeat, with all the band locked in from the start, an attractive repeating guitar line underlining the vocal delivery. It latches into your ear like sand in a shoe, and evokes all sorts of dusty plains and associated degrees of desolation. The glass is still half-empty, but hope remains: “yeah, I can’t change it all, but I can change my mind“. A terrific track, it is followed by one of the singles that prefaced the full release, Where The Lavender Grows, which fills the glass up handsomely. A gentle swagger, it rotates around some lazy loose-wristed guitar work, where lazy is good, and carries a peaceful easy Eagles vibe, crossed with the Doobie Brothers. Each in their early incarnations, of course. The vocals remain languidly top notch, with the guitar arpeggiating away, as if with a wry smile.

Stormwall slows and strips things right back, spare and sparse. On the surface a song of anticipating the worst, should a relationship falter, there is a sort of Every Breath You Take aspect that jars slightly against the mournful delivery: “If I let you go now, I don’t know how far I’d fall through the stormwall.” It remains, nonetheless, a striking song, with sonorous piano chords bookending the voice and guitar. A Word I Needed is maybe the next step in the story. If Powys wrote these two songs, he seems not a happy chappy, but, boy, he can pen a tune, and this one, with just voice and picked guitar, is one of the best.

RESTING FACE

I am told the whole band wrote Shake Off The Rain and, indeed, Every Town, which follows. The spirit of the Cowboy Junkies inhabits the first. Way more positive, it still retains a hangdog demeanour; I guess the resting face of the band is never going to be that of a wide grin. This doesn’t diminish the experience, mind, as any such plangency sharpens the overall poignancy of delivery. Every Town sees Bentley straining at his higher register, adding still further pathos, as lap steel curls about him. With the band providing a dense foundation, this works and works well.

A whispered count beckons in the banjo led Strongly In Your Arms. But banjo as in a slow and determined flicker, rather than any bluegrass harum-scarum, able to calm the ear of even the timidest horse. A stand out track, both Bentley’s are at their best, Sam at peak emotivivity, and Josh providing exactly the sort of nuthin’ fancy percussion the mood demands. Deep (In The Plans We Made) is another keeper, and is the best example of the harmonies available in the band, oddly kept somewhat under wraps until now. Grouped around a single microphone, Bentley, Powys and Lacy come together, manufacturing a soothing balm, that might have had earlier and better use made of it before. Searching hard for a description, the one that best fits, is the one the band describe this sound themselves, which is vulnerable.

CONSILIATION & CONSOLIDATION

To finish, Borne By You seems to come from an older tradition, and carries cadences of the sort of song James Taylor might and could have written. The background, behind Powys’s returning banjo, is however made of moodier stuff, balancing (more) vocal balm with layers of additional instrumental nuance. One of a few songs with organ at the margin, it somehow gives a sense of conciliation and consolidation, ultimately to the whole album.

I enjoyed this record. It is true that, by and large, the overall tenor is downbeat, and sometimes downright maudlin, but I have no issue with that, tending to enjoy a wallow in such waters. Plus, in the same way the devil may well have all the best tunes, give me a sad song, every time, over any happy go lucky froth. I am sure the band have lighter material, but, here, for an all over immersion of soul searching and self seeking, this could be a worthy soundtrack. If you like the atmospheric of Counting Crows’ August & Everything After, this would make for a good September.

Here’s When The Lavender Blooms:

The Paper Kites: Website

At The Barrier: Facebook / X  / Instagram