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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

The Paper Raincoat keeps clouds away with imaginative melodies

                A first listen of Amber Rubarth's EP, "Unfinished Art" (2006), will immediately hook practically any listener. Her sound is fresh and quirky, filled with honest, image-driven lyrics. The melodies showcase folky guitar string sounds and her husky yet high-pitched voice. Rubarth's newest, equally impressive project is The Paper Raincoat, which its MySpace.com page describes as "an imaginative collaboration between Brooklyn songwriters Amber Rubarth and Alex Wong."
    Those who enjoy Rubarth's solo work will be thrilled with The Paper Raincoat. At 8 p.m. on Saturday, The Paper Raincoat will be one of the acts playing at Club Passim's "Next Generation Celebration," conveniently located at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square. Passim Folk Music and Cultural Center, located in Harvard Square, is celebrating its 50th anniversary as an independent music venue by showcasing a range of up-and-coming acoustic talents, including The Paper Raincoat. Saturday's performance sees the duo alongside acts such as Laura Cortese, Kris Delmhorst and Girlyman.
    "We had decided that we wanted to be a band before we knew what that was going to be," explained Wong. "We knew that we liked working together and decided to take time off to do some writing." That time certainly helped their music develop, as these songwriters came up with truly innovative material.
    The Paper Raincoat is unique in that its album makes a conscious effort to portray one original story, a story about a woman named Grace. "We had a friend who was taking a comedy improv class at the time," Wong explained. "She kept coming home and telling us about these weird exercises they would do in class. We decided to try one for our writing to see what would happen." Grace's story emerged from the exercise.
    The concept band's narrative follows Grace as she reaches her 50th birthday and begins to reevaluate her life. While cleaning out the house of her late father, she stumbles upon the designs for one of his inventions: a paper raincoat. This particular item reminds her of how she, in seeing her father's failure as an inventor, decided to give up on her childhood plan of becoming a writer. What follows is a reflection on her choices and the possibilities of her life had she held onto her original hopes and dreams.
    "We would like all of the songs we write to relate to the story and kind of paint this picture little by little of this world, and at the same time, add some of our personal resonance to her own experience," Wong said. "It should be a larger story [to which] everything could be connected."
    Rubarth agreed, saying "We don't have this whole story written out already. It doesn't have an end. The back-story keeps developing. We want the songs to be able to sit alone, but for people to also hear the songs as an album, as one whole."
    Wong and Rubarth hope that listeners will see the complete picture in their songs. "It's very visual music," Rubarth said. "It's not stuff where people are going to wear all black — it's about color and excitement." The songs do suggest a certain whimsical exuberance that a listener can connect with something colorful. "There's a creative energy in the melodies that goes back to this idea of the story, of this fantastic image that is a paper raincoat," Rubarth said.
    The group's self-titled EP consists of piano-driven melodies, lots of sporadic percussion, and both Wong and Rubarth's strong, clear voices. The duo will also be experimenting with some new songs, making Saturday's performance a unique opportunity to catch a glimpse at an up-and-coming group with a bright future.