The Paperbacks - Lit From Within reviews
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| Popmatters |
 Despite a career now spanning three decades and as many bands, Doug McLean basically does one kind of song and generally does it very well. His main ‘90s gig, the Bonaduces (he did simultaneous duty in Painted Thin), made fast, buzzing punk-pop songs in what might have been easily described as a prototypically scrappy Ramones/Buzzcocks mode, were it not for McLean’s uncommonly ambitious lyrical content. The Democracy of Sleep, the band’s second and final release from 1998, in particular, was startlingly mature in its insights into the fears that plague youth in its initial dawning of awareness of mortality, lending songs with titles like “I Nominate My Kitten for the King of the Dead” and “The Second Annual National Depression Awareness Day Sleepover Party” a gravity that any of the era’s Green Day wannabes would have eschewed for cheap jokes.
If McLean’s current outfit, the Paperbacks, differs in any way from the Bonaduces, the variation lies solely in the music. Where his old band sprinted through his songs with heedless energy, the Paperbacks languish in them, guitars now chiming instead of hollering, the music now spacious and unobtrusive in backing McLean’s boyishly earnest vocals, rather than constantly threatening to obscure them under the music’s punkish blare. Content-wise, however, the band’s previous two albums—An Episode of Sparrows (2003) and An Illusion Against Death (2007)—read like natural extensions of the stories begun on the earlier band’s records. Their perspectives on their favored topics—death, grieving, fear, the occasional dash of youthful romantic longing or political fury—both remain and grow somewhat deeper and more weathered by age, right along with the tone of their music....full text |
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| Uniter |
| Even though he’s just 34, I think we should already give singer-guitarist Doug McLean some sort of lifetime achievement award for writing well-crafted, literate, urgent indie rock songs that stick with you for days. He did it with The Bonaduces and he does it now with The Paperbacks. Preceded by An Episode of Sparrows (2003) and An Illusion Against Death (2007), Lit From Within covers a lot of sonic territory throughout its 32 songs. Highlights include the slow and introspective Good Lives (For Bad Reasons); the punky rockers Stars (For Claire Massey) and Make Art; and Math Damage/Maggot Age, which has a compelling darkness to it. It’s hard to find a bad song in the bunch. People might think a band crazy to release a double album in this day and age, but The Paperbacks pull it off with flying colours....full text |
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| Mog |
Far from using Lit From Within as an opportunity to exploit the freedoms and expectations of the classic double-album format, the Paperbacks have basically just made the same album that they always make, only twice as big.
Despite a career now spanning three decades and as many bands, Doug McLean basically does one kind of song and generally does it very well. His main '90s gig, the Bonaduces (he did simultaneous duty in Painted Thin), made fast, buzzing punk-pop songs in what might have been easily described as a prototypically scrappy Ramones/Buzzcocks mode, were it not for McLean’s uncommonly ambitious lyrical content. The Democracy of Sleep, the band’s second and final release…...full text |
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