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Artist
Paper Arrows
12+ albums
indie rockalternative rockPop-Rockchicago
about
IThe story of Paper Arrows: Across the winters of 2007, Joe Goodkin, Jay Marino, and Darren Garvey pieced together a group of recordings in a Chicago attic overlooking I-90, working around ten of Goodkin's orphaned acoustic demos. Quiet songs like Again and Again combine fingerpicked guitars with the sounds of highway traffic and trains to create a sonic bed for whispered lyrics fraught with pain and regret. Hope flickers on the ebullient Motown-influenced Turn, but by the album's closer, When You Left, the loss is fully realized and Paper Arrows' 2008 debut Look Alive is complete. Following favorable press on Look Alive (the Chicago Tribune's Redeye asked "Did rock superstars Radiohead steal local band Paper Arrows' idea?"), the band returned to the studio to begin what would become its second full-length, 2009's Things We Would Rather Lose. In contrast to the silent spaces of Look Alive, Things We Would Rather Lose is packed with noisy guitars, distorted organs, layered vocals, a horn section, and a stylistic variety that evokes the nausea of recovery. On select tracks, additional musicians joined the core three, including the Cosmic Unity horns, pianist Drew Scalercio and bassist Anthony Burton. The central question of the lead track More ("Can you leave the ghost behind?") is addressed in song after song, building to the climactic, chaotic final statement of Explosions Below ("Turning the page on the last piece of love"). Things We Rather Lose found a place on t
