ALBUM REVIEW: The Paper Kites Make Music in Community on ‘At The Roadhouse’

Last year, Melbourne, Australia-based band The Paper Kites came upon a building in the rural outpost of Campbells Creek that once was a shop serving local gold miners. The band decided to give it a new life as a music space, dubbing it “The Roadhouse” and taking inspiration from “all the great dive bars we’d been to around the world,” the band says in press materials for the album they made there: At The Roadhouse. For a solid month, they worked on songs during the week, then performed them for a local audience on Friday and Saturday nights, letting the songs evolve and tracking them live when they were ready.

Still from film footage from The Roadhouse shot by cinematographer Keiren Watson-Bonnice

That sense of community flows through the finished album, the band’s sixth since forming in 2010, letting listeners in on songs that distill heartbreak and longing into beauty and hope. At The Roadhouse opens with the gentle sounds of an audience settling in for an intimate performance, and first song “Midnight Moon” brings the setting through the speakers:

I know a place where we can go
Where the night burns long
But the town runs slow
Down at The Roadhouse

Later in the song, when Sam Bentley sings about “slow dancing,” he stretches the syllables languorously across several measures, and you’re swept right along into the scene.

“Black & Thunder” is a slinky, blues-tinged meditation that borrows from Fleetwood Mac in sound and in drama. Distorted electric guitar and a driving bass line create a mood that you can picture filling the room, the audience swaying together and tapping their feet in time as the singer pleads for relief from the darkness dogging him.

Much of the album explores the constant struggle against such darkness, but light is never snuffed out completely. Banjo and pedal steel tug hard at the heart on “Hurts So Good,” but Bentley’s voice — earnest, emotive, and silky smooth — puts it in perspective: “Give a little love / take a little pain / We turn and we keep on burning.”

Hand in hand with the darkness in many of these songs is the past — loves that have left and memories that won’t fade like they’re supposed to. Country weeper “Marietta” peels back what’s left after a hard goodbye, wallowing in sadness but allowing that “maybe peace will come in time.”

Most the songs on At The Roadhouse keep a slow and steady pace, which weaves a spell but can feel a bit sleepy across 16 songs. The one exception is the fast and loud “June’s Stolen Car,” a story song told in crunchy guitars and big choruses, with verses traded by Bentley and David Powys. There’s a whiff of the weight of the past here, too, but the song’s June decides to do something about it.

Despite its title, album closer “Darkness at My Door” is a rousing major key send-off that asks for “a little light” — enough, at least, “to show me the way.” With that, The Roadhouse audience applauds, but the evening isn’t done just yet. As the album fades out, one more chorus rises again, with handclaps and voices filling the room. It’s a memory everyone who stepped into The Roadhouse — in person or via listening to the recording — can carry with them into the wider world, a light against the darkness.

The Paper Kites (photo by Nick McKinlay)

The Paper Kites’ At The Roadhouse is out Sept. 1 via Nettwerk Music Group / Wonderlick.