ALBUM REVIEW: Paper Wings Lets New and Old Folk Blend Fly on ‘Listen to the World Spin’
Noah Berlatsky
Posted On March 12, 2024
Like Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss, and Iris DeMent before them, the Nashville-based duo Paper Wings mixes coffeehouse folk with old-time and bluegrass — the haunting self-reflective introspection of Joni Mitchell and the haunting high lonesome sound of Bill Monroe.
The exact proportion of Mitchell to Monroe can vary from track to track and album to album of course, and on Paper Wings’ latest, Listen to the World Spin, singers/songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Emily Mann and Wila Frank lean decidedly toward indie folk polish.
I do miss the rougher twin-fiddle saw and keening vocals of Paper Wings’ 2017 self-titled debut. But it’s hard to argue with the close harmonies of new compositions like lead single “Marigold,” with the banjo chiming like a lullaby and the lyrics evoking bluesy, almost desperate optimism: “Oh my darling help me see / the new day blooming inside me.”
Similarly, tracks like “Listen to the World” and “Mad Thing” are built on the contrast between their gentle, welcoming surface and unsettling intimations of fear, anxiety, and obsession churning just below in the moaning yodels and minor key strums. When the duo declare that the mad thing has a “dark, shimmering mind,” they could be talking about their own introverted, bittersweet album.
Perhaps dark, shimmering, and bittersweet is where Paper Wings plan to put their energy in the future: “Airport,” at least, perhaps the most indelible song on the album, makes an unsettling case for the finality of departures and the impossibility of recovering the past. Still, the final song on Listen to the World Spin reassures fans that Mann and Frank can still break out and hoe down when they want to. “Left Hand Lane” is a driving banjo bluegrass blues that would fit well on a Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard album. “Riding in that fast-track, left-hand lane / Eighty miles an hour take me home!” Whether they’re driving fast or easing back, Paper Wings are worth following.
Paper Wings’ Listen to the World Spin is out March 15 via Free Dirt Records.
