On their debut album, The Paywalls tell Kurt Vile to eat his heart out.
Well, not exactly. Kurt Vile is great and so is his music, but on their debut LP It’s Nice Out, the local group delivers hazy folk that’s cut from the same vintage-denim cloth as that of Vile.
It’s hard not to make comparisons between the two groups. Both have guitar-driven tracks, bassy story-telling vocals, and straightforward percussion. Both write songs that meander around, rather than rushing to any sort of end, but never overstay their welcome either.
Each song on the album provides a nice vignette back to summer, when it’s easy to imagine these tracks were written. Like Vile, The Paywalls use distortion and other lo-fi elements to their advantage, making their music warmer, fuzzier and thematically emphatic of their song’s lyrics.
Still, this isn’t meant to be derisive of The Paywalls for being derivative of Vile and artists like him. Rather, this is simply to say that the band bares many similarities to an extremely talented and accomplished artist.
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In fact, The Paywalls do stand out all in their own as well over the course of the project’s 13 tracks. Their contrast of clean lead guitars and distorted rhythmic ones on “Love is Gone Again,” is one particularly striking moment. Their groovy synth that’s back-to-back on “Horizontal Plane” and “Our Summer House” is perfectly out of place within their sound.
Not much is known about this presumably recent band, but they are definitely people to look out for on upcoming venue calendars.
