“Wish” by Paper Route, Friday, December 10, 2021

Paper Route signed to Universal Motown before releasing their debut LP, Absence, following their Are We All Forgotten EP. Only the title track of the EP appeared on Absence, as the band stepped further away from their Americana roots and more into the realm of retro-synth pop. Bassist/keyboardist Chad Howat recorded the album. The band played multiple instruments, recorded in an old mansion near Nashville. I remember reading something about how the album was intend to be rerecorded but the band and the label preferred the originals, but I can't find an article about that. Absence was the debut of Paper Route as a band, complete with a guitarist, bassist, drummer, and a ton of synthesizers. Paper Route, though, would become a revolving door of drummers and guitarists. Only singer and multi-instrumentalist JT Daly and bassist/keyboardist Chad Howat would stay for the entire duration of the band's career.

I WISH YOU WOULD LISTEN, TO GET THROUGH IT. Paper Route's early work includes the theme of breaking up and often includes the motif of Christmas. Their second EP, 2006's A Thrill of Hope takes its name from a line from "O Holy Night," and the songs "Sing You to Sleep" and "The Sound" contrast the magic of Christmas with a sadness of lost love. Their 2009 EP Thank God the Year Is Finally Over contained an acoustic cover of today's song by another artist, the Christmas hymn, "In the Bleak Midwinter," and the title track which reflects on the singer’s sheer exhaustion from a busy year on Christmas day. “Wish” is the second track on Absence. Following  the ethereal “Enemy Among Us,” “Wish” builds an energy that serves as a counterpoint to the calm in the album. But “Wish” isn’t purely a rock song. The noise-pop bridge that sounds like the musical equivalent to a trying flying a plane when the engine failed and the pilot, without any panic, struggles to restart the engine which sputters back to life as if nothing happened, sets the song apart from any song I’ve ever heard before. The rest of the album holds this contrast between rock and electronic, but often both with huge drums. The reviews that I've read for this album are mixed. I've recommend this album to friends, but no one seemed to love it. I'm not sure that Absence can fully be appreciated on the first listen. 

I FELL TO PIECES ONE NIGHT IN DECEMBER. I remember on two separate occasions during two different album cycles (Absence and The Peace of Wild Things) singer JT Daly said something like “this has been the hardest year of my entire life." Whether it were band or personal issues, that transparency had me quite worried about the singer. As we come to the end of another year, taking assessment of what went well and what we need to work on, I think about Daly's statement. I only wish that "Thank God the Year Is Finally Over" were available on Apple Music, because that's a toast that I want to give on December 31. In my assessment of bad years, 2020 would have to be the worst followed by 2016 and 2021 for the third. I'm not at liberty to say why the end of this year is so stressful, but much of it is a culmination of living in a world where it takes increasingly more effort to find relief for my stress thanks to the pandemic. On top of the ordinary stresses of short-staffed teaching department at the end of the semester, I realize now is the time to make better decisions and build skills for the future. Many friends have decided to leave and it seems that a natural cycle is coming to a close. What's next for me? What's next for them? What's next for all of us.

 

Read “Wish” by Paper Route on Genius.

Studio version:

Live version from Audio Files: