The Current

Issue date: 8/25/08 Section: Arts and Entertainment

The pace of popular culture rarely slows down, and the ability to keep up with it can make or break a band.

While everyone wants to hear something new and originality is always prized, many bands launch themselves into the spotlight by playing a known style or even mirroring another popular band.

Paper Route may, at first glance, seem to be doing just that, with their new EP "Are We All Forgotten."

On "Are We All Forgotten," the sound is smooth and spacey, with repetitive electronic drums keeping beat and upper-range vocals sailing over sustained, open, synthesized chords. Their lyrics are earnest and sentimental. Their name is…The Postal Service?

Close. While other bands have suffered at the hands of over-comparison (Kings of Leon's rise to popularity was hindered after they were branded "The Southern Strokes"), Paper Route may benefit from nabbing as many tagalong Postal Service fans as they can.

This is not to say that they do not have a good thing going. The five tracks on their latest EP, "Are We All Forgotten," are catchier than they have to be and have a full, well-produced sound.

That sound, however, is a familiar one. The title track, "Are We All Forgotten," is so reminiscent, both vocally and lyrically, of a Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie, The Postal Service) song that it could easily be mistaken for one.

But "Empty House," easily the best song on the album, finds Paper Route breaking out a little bit more. The song is more driven and beat-based than other tracks, and the vocal arrangements and mixing hearken to 1980's synth-pop ballads.

Unfortunately in this song and throughout the disc, the lyrics never go the extra mile. More bluntly, they never even go the original mile.

Here is a sample from the refrain of the title track: "Have I lost my faith in you?/Are we all forgotten too?/Don't you break my heart/Don't you break my heart again."

Few moments on the album find singer Chad Howat straying far from this territory.

True, the music packs some emotional weight behind these lyrics but not enough to prevent them coming off as hackneyed and familiar most of the time.

When it comes to Paper Route's lyrics, less is more, a rule that greatly benefits the opening track "American Clouds."

This spacey slow-burner is quite catchy and repeats the phrase "We're flying like an airplane" to an overall less corny effect than most of the other songs, and that, unfortunately. is saying a lot.

Still, the music is catchy, heartfelt, and harmless. Lyrics aside, the band's main shortcoming, a lack of originality in their modus operandi, is more urgent.

"Paper House" is not half bad, but unless they develop some aspect of their act that makes them compelling, they may be destined to join the ranks of the millions of MySpace bands that have an adequately practiced sound and a lot of sentimental things to sing about but no real future.

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