{"id":382,"date":"2010-02-04T09:55:29","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T15:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=382"},"modified":"2010-02-04T09:55:29","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T15:55:29","slug":"the-paperbacks-doubling-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2010\/02\/04\/the-paperbacks-doubling-up\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paperbacks – Doubling Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Elves
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"thepaperbackslit\"
\nWhile reports of the music industry\u2019s demise have been greatly exaggerated, the more recent prognosis is that the full-length album is dead (or at least dying). Quickly disseminated and digested as MP3 singles and the shortened attention span of the Twitterverse have created a (not so) perfect storm where albums are given short shrift.
\nSo, local act the Paperbacks chose to follow up their 2007 full-length, An Illusion Against Death<\/em>, with a double-album.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

You read that right\u2014instead of accepting the perceived reality, the band instead chose to do something that few bands have tried; and even fewer have done well.<\/p>\n

Songwriter and frontman Doug McLean admits it\u2019s a surprising strategy, and Lit from Within\u2019s genesis is as complicated as it is surprising. \u201cI wish there was a really simple answer I could give you, but [it\u2019s] a three parter to fit the double-album. The first part is, after we made our last album, we were in a bit of a state of flux. We had a few members leave at the time, [we] gathered some new people and those new people were touring an album they didn\u2019t have a connection with. So, we were lost a little bit and I felt like we needed something to galvanize the troops\u2014a big target to send our little army at. So… double album! It\u2019s ambitious, let\u2019s get everyone going,\u201d McLean explains.
\n\u201cThe next part is, I was reading an interview with Lenny Kravitz, I think\u2014it could have been someone else\u2014and he said, \u2018I live each day as if it might be my last, and I apply that same mentality to my music. I make every album as though it was my last album.\u2019 I gave that a bit of thought and I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s exactly true for every artistic project you take on, but maybe it\u2019s a good plan for this. If I\u2019m going to make this album like it\u2019s my last album, that\u2019s like saying, \u2018This sums up what I\u2019ve done so far.\u2019 So for me, it was thinking, what would that be to sum it up? And what would be worthy of a double-album?\u201d McLean asks rhetorically.
\n\u201cSo, here\u2019s part three: I was talking to a friend who is involved in a number of social-activist type endeavours and it was around Christmas and she noted, \u2018I\u2019ve done all this work to benefit the world and I\u2019m sitting alone at Christmas and it sucks and I don\u2019t even know why I bother.\u2019 Thinking about that in relation to the second part, I started wondering, why do we bother doing stuff, why does my friend bother doing all this work, why do we bother having a band\u2014what is the reason for all this stuff? And so that\u2019s what the record\u2019s about, and also why it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

For McLean and the rest of the Paperbacks (Jaret McNabb on bass, Kevin Andrechuk on guitar, Corey Biluk on drums, and Kevin McLean on keyboards) the answer to \u2018Why bother?\u2019 (both the direct question for the band and the more existential one) can be found within the 32 tracks on Lit from Within<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cMost of the material on the album is headed in that direction. The answers are wrapped up in the text of the record,\u201d Mclean says. \u201cThe way it was plotted out is as a progression. It\u2019s not so much two different sides of things, it\u2019s just a long song cycle to get to a certain point. The first disc sort of raises the questions and the second disc would answer them, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Elves While reports of the music industry\u2019s demise have been greatly exaggerated, the more recent prognosis is that the full-length album is dead (or at least dying). Quickly disseminated and digested as MP3 singles and the shortened attention span of the Twitterverse have created a (not so) perfect storm where albums are given […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[454,563,979],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-indie-rock","tag-local","tag-the-paperbacks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}