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Paper Jam - This and That (2025)

Artist: Paper Jam

Author: Sarah

Date: 06/08/2025

Listen: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify

Over the course of the weekend since its release, this has already become my album of the year so far! As a Talulah Gosh fan, I was of course drawn to songs like "Polka Dot Girl" and "Skyscraper", which are very reminiscent of a few of the songs on their Peel Sessions, but with cleaner guitars. If that's all that Paper Jam was, I'd still be recommending this to others, and probably still consider this a promising debut, but almost certainly not my favorite album of the first half of 2025.

Aside from the aforementioned "Polka Dot Girl", the first half of this album shows off a slower side of Paper Jam. Sometimes they get a bit dreamy ("Roaming Eyes"), sometimes they go for jangle pop ("Ojos de Luneta"), and even as someone who can be overly critical of those types of songs, they work! Unfortunately, the title song misses on this front; it feels unnaturally slow and it drains any energy the song could have had.

As for the second half, they pick the pace back up and, even better, they've got more prominent backing vocals now! Mostly they take the form of overlapping vocals for the last 30 seconds or so of the songs, but that's the kind of thing I love to hear, so that's great news for me! They've also got some synth flutes (or some type of wind instrument) on "Never Know" and "Skyscraper", which end up providing the best instrumental hooks on the album (in particular, they've had me singing the chorus of "Skyscraper" all weekend long).

So, basically, this album takes a swing at various different types of indiepop, and manages to make them all work, for the most part! This is the type of album that careers are built on; right now it's only available digitally, but I'd be shocked if no label decides to pick them up and give them a physical release in the next year.