Indie rock has never seen a band balance the indie mentality with the popular. Since their debut album, ‘Absence,’ the rock group Paper Route have been clearing teetering against the line of break through success. The album featured massive hooks, soothing vocals, and instrumentation relying on the melodic and irresistible. They played the tour circuits brilliantly covering all gambits. They went on a major tour with the massively popular rock group Paramore, then went on a smaller intimidate tour with the now defunct though still widely respected group Copeland. Of course, they capped this off with their own smaller headlining tour.
Their sophomore album ‘The Peace of Wild Things’ set for release Sept 11, features all the wildly eargasmic melodies from their debut, of course, revamped and stylized in a newer and brighter package. The album has none of those quality dips towards the end like what the group’s debut album had, but none of the songs quite reach that peak of ‘Wish and ‘Carousel.’
There are a few key routes for bands like ‘Paper Route,’ none of them really involving paper. They break into the mainstream with a powerful summer/fall single, and then rely on a solid fan base to retain their career into the future. (Foster the People, The Black Keys, Better Than Ezra to name a few from a million). The other route is independent releases, self-releases, and building a steady fan base from the ground up.
One involves independence; one involves striving to the record labels. This is the barest bone breakdown for bands of this caliber.
Actually, one of these routes may involve a whole lot of paper- signing contracts, legal paperwork, shoveling paper from subsidized “indie” labels. This is the route of the breakthrough billboard topping single. Yep. Paper Route are better than that, and so is the music.
