Mixtapemotions

"Glass Heart Hymn" by Paper Route, Saturday, September 25, 2021

Taking long breaks between albums in order to self-record in old mansions around Nashville, Paper Route has only produced three full-length albums in their fifteen years active. Whenever they announce a new album, it’s met with delays. Their sophomore album, The Peace of Wild Things, is no exception. After the departure of guitarist/co-vocalist Andy Smith, the band didn’t have a permanent lead guitarist, and wouldn’t until Nick Aranda joined the band before recording Real Emotion. The Peace of Wild Things is a more pop-friendly album than their etherial debut, Absence. Peace builds the band up lyrically and contains some memorable choruses. But songs like “Sugar,” “Rabbit Holes,” “Tamed,” “Calm My Soul,” and today’s song, “Glass Heart Hymn,” the otherwise straight-forward pop album down an artistic journey.


MY FEET HAVE LED ME STRAIGHT INTO MY GRAVE. Named after a poem by farmer and environmentalist Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things evokes contrasting emotions upon listening to the album. There are moments of love and there are moments of heartache. Songs like “Love Letters,” “Two Hearts,” and “Sugar” satisfy the listener with the peace of a love song, but wildness is not far behind. In an interview with Tyler Huckabee for Relevant Magazine’s podcast, singer J.T. Daly says that on Peace of the Wild Things it is the first time that the lyrics have him “nervous and embarrassed” to reveal so much of his life. While listeners won’t hear anything too incriminating, the lyrics are provocative, making listeners wonder what happened. A lyrical motif that Daly follows throughout the album is early chapters of Genesis. In “Love Letters,” the speaker is found “sleeping in Eden’s garden,” in today’s song, Cain, the first murderer, represents a broken relationship. In “Sugar,” a line might reference the division of the world after the failure of the Tower of Babel. “Glass Heart Hymn,” the fourth track, drags down the melancholic resolution that “Better Life” left the listener with. “Glass” is also the first major musical shift on the record, which had been drums, keys, and mid-tempo ballads. Electronic drums, synths, and Daly’s crooning make the song sound like it’s a lost track from around 1983. Lyrically, “Glass Heart Hymn” is one of the most overtly religious on the album. Paper Route had avoided the Christian Rock label on their first record, but by this record, RadioU embraced them and welcomed them into the fold. Using the Cain and Abel story, Daly explores longing for forgiveness, and in the chorus, he gets it, via “Hallalujah[s] rain[ing] . . . and pour[ing]” upon him.

LORD, HAVE YOU WALKED AWAY FROM ME? There is nothing that instills more fear into the heart of a church-raised child than upsetting God. The message comes as a double-forked tongue. The nursery school teacher says that Jesus loves you unconditionally, yet tells you the Bible stories about great men in the Bible whom God had chosen to do incredible things, only for them to turn their backs and do wicked things. For every King David, there was a King Saul. For every Daniel there was a Nebuchadnezzar. The cost of following God was high, and the path was steep, and narrow. In Mrs. Davis’s Sabbath School class, in the weekly Sabbath School magazine, in the Arthur Maxwell ‘s illustrated Bible Story volumes littered throughout doctor’s offices across America and in Allan’s home, before adolescence Allan was equipped with a knowledge of Biblical history. The tales of how those who would be great men made decisions centered around pride, some around selfishness, became villains, and were ultimately obliterated by divine retribution, helped him make decisions in his daily life. But sometimes, the voice of the villain would sound all too reasonable. What if he had been among the boys who mocked the prophet? How would he feel if God hadn’t accepted his sacrifice? Why couldn’t Cain give what he had to offer? There were always answers to this. In college he would read Conflict of the Ages series, which Adventists used as their primary interpretation of the Bible. The voice of the 19th century prophet Ellen White supplied the right way to read the scriptures. Why did he feel so cold after reading her works, though? Why did he feel more alienated? Why was his religion so alienating? Why couldn’t he get every thought into submission? But the fear of being further alienated from those deeply entrenched in the Adventist tradition kept him in. How could he be alienated from his God? How could he ever walk away?