Paper Kites - If You Go There, I Hope You Find It (Album Review) Featured
- Written by Captain Stavros
Paper Kites
If You Go There, I Hope You Find It
Golden Tones and Quiet Certainty
After 15 years of quiet consistency, Australia’s The Paper Kites have become something of an emotional utility band. Their seventh studio album, If You Go There, I Hope You Find It, doesn’t attempt to reinvent that role — and that’s very much the point.
From the opening moments, the record is steeped in the band’s trademark golden tones, the same sun-bleached warmth that first drew listeners in on Woodland and its enduring centrepiece, ‘Bloom’. That familiar finger-picked guitar style returns here in spades: stripped back, intricate, and gently deferential to Sam Bentley’s vocals. It’s music that knows where it sounds best — at ease, unforced, and deeply comfortable in its own skin.
Paper Kites originates as an impromptu jam band, and while the polish has increased over the years, they’ve never strayed far from the foundations of their success. If You Go There, I Hope You Find It feels like a coming home, not just lyrically but sonically. Bentley himself describes writing the album in a borrowed room on a friend’s farm, and you can hear that sense of borrowed stillness throughout — an atmosphere of reflection, healing, and quiet hope.
This is not an album of surprises, but of variations. You’re not getting an overworked, conceptual left turn here — no Scott Walker mid-’80s abstraction, no Michelin-star deconstruction of a grilled cheese with Antarctic shrimp foam. What you get instead is the seventh instalment of a band working confidently within a proven framework. For long-time fans, it’s a familiar recipe with subtle tweaks. For newer listeners, it’s a sturdy entry point that invites backtracking.
Lyrically, the band keeps things refreshingly unpretentious. There’s no labyrinthine poetry to decode, just relatable themes that land softly: coming home, familiarity, vulnerability, and the kind of hopefulness that doesn’t shout to be heard. In an era dominated by dramatic headlines and emotional excess, the restraint is part of the appeal. These songs wash over you rather than grab you by the collar — predictable, perhaps, but intentionally so. Like sinking into a bean bag chair, it’s comfort without apologising for aesthetic.
Standout tracks such as ‘Stormwall’, ‘Morning Gum’, and the anchor tune, ‘Shake Off The Rain’ showcase the band’s knack for melodic ballads that feel lived-in rather than laboured. ‘Deep (In The Plans We Made)’ and ‘Every Town’ linger longer, the latter offering some of the album’s most affecting lines — “dancing through these restless nights” — a lyric that neatly encapsulates the record’s gentle emotional pulse.
As guitarist David Powter notes, rhythm and feel are paramount for the band, and that philosophy runs through the album like muscle memory. This is a record assembled less with measuring cups than with instinct — a dash here, a pause there — giving it a homemade, human quality.
If You Go There, I Hope You Find It won’t derail your expectations, but it doesn’t need to. Cultivated on ground that’s still fertile, it’s an inoffensive, easy-listening body of work — perfect for low-impact routines, photo slideshows, or the emotional hum of a Grey’s Anatomy episode. Sometimes, knowing exactly what you do well — and doing it with care — is its own quiet triumph.