Paper Empire

Today is the official release of Better Than Ezra's new album Paper Empire. If you pre-ordered it from their website, you got it early so I've been listening to it since Friday. I was a little puzzled after my first listen but overall, I like the album a lot. I think my confusion lies from the fact that singer Kevin Griffin was working on a solo record, and had some demos of songs up on his MySpace page. A few of these tracks ended up on the BTE album so I'm not really sure how much was written as a "BTE song" and how much was written as a "Kevin Griffin solo song."

Some of the tracks seem very pop-ish and experimental to be Better Than Ezra songs - songs like "Nightclubbing" and "All In." The track "The Loveless" even has a kind of gospel background vocal track to it. Other songs seem like straight up Ezra we've come to know and love like "Absolutely Still." I remember reading somewhere that "Hell No!" was written as a kind of response song to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

Of course I'm going to recommend the album to you, but I'd say the standout tracks are "Absolutely Still" (the first single), "Black Light," "The Loveless," "Nightclubbing," "Hell No!" and "Fit" which seems primed to be a wedding first dance song. But not mine.

Amazon MP3 link
iTunes link