Paper Lady shot by Renee Newman
It’s safe to say that Boston self-described “dream-rockers” Paper Lady is a band that values dynamics. A Paper Lady song can be achingly quiet and staid or turbulent like a jet engine (and often both), but never unbalanced in either direction. Well-read indie rock pupils of the more guitar-pedal-centric variety both contemporary and classic, the group also pulls detritus from folk traditions and the sonic world building of electronic music into their practice to create music that feels multi-dimensional and uncannily cinematic in scope. Their live is also terrifically loud, punishing and pleasurable in all the right ways.
Having kicked it around the Allston/Brighton underground for some time, Paper Lady has been road-testing the material that makes up Idle Fate, their debut full length LP, for some time now. We here at Allston Pudding are pleased to be premiering that album’s first single in “Silt”. A treatise of sorts on the restorative powers of dirt (or something artful like that), the Slint-like guitar harmonics and crushingly heavy chorus add some new flourishes to their excellent racket while providing a key entry point into the world of Idle Fate.
Watch the video for “Silt” (which premiered at exactly 3:33pm for those keeping score) below and read on for some more thoughts from all 3 members of Paper Lady.
Allston Pudding: This is a track you’ve been playing out for a bit, when did you originally write it and how much has the live show changed the song since then?
Alli Raina: Rowan really spearheaded this one! I pieced together the lyrics from fragments of journal entries of mine. Everything really came together for this song in the summer of 2023 when we went on a writing retreat in Catskill, New York. We were at a pretty remote cabin without any technology or phone service. I solidified the lyrics and melody for “Silt” while sitting at the bottom of a little waterfall on the property. When I finished writing the lyrics fully, I looked up and realized all of the rocks surrounding me were covered in slugs.
Alex Castile: Actually through the recording process we added all kinds of new elements that we then incorporated into our live sets.
Rowan Martin: I wrote the riff at the beginning of the song a couple years ago right after seeing Ovlov for the first time. It inspired me to write something really heavy which I don’t usually do. I hadn’t intended it to be an idea for Paper Lady, but I played it for Alli on an acoustic guitar and she really glued all the pieces together. Then we just drilled it over and over again in the cabin. It came to its current form pretty quickly.
AP: Why is this the first single from the album? Are there themes here that tie into the rest of it?
AR: It was one of the first songs that really came together for the album. The pre-chorus line, “Bury yourself in the dirt, to feel closer to God,” encapsulates the song’s core theme: the disconnection from oneself, from nature, and the desperate longing to reclaim that lost connection. It’s written as a scathing note to myself. I was dealing with a lot of anxiety at the time and it felt very debilitating. Throughout the song, I’m begging that part of me to see the pain it’s caused. I think that it’s a perfect initial step into the world of this album.
RM: I think sonically all the songs are very different, but “Silt” represents the primary emotional space of the album. A bit dark and intuitive.
AP: What is it about soil that you find inspiring?
AR: Soil is pure life force! Many a beautiful thing sprouts from it, and it is what we are returned to in the end. It’s so magnificent and so underrated.
AC: I feel soil represents a feeling of surrounding, that can be both comforting and claustrophobic at times.
AP: Walk us through the role that nature plays in making Paper Lady music in general.
AR: I’ve always enjoyed using parallels I find in nature to describe my emotions. I find a lot of comfort identifying with the trees, ocean, and wind. I think for this album I really identified that about myself and leaned into it.
RM: Nature is so inspiring. Being in a woodland setting just gets me in the perfect mood for writing music. When we were in the cabin it was super remote, which I think kind of allows you to be really in touch with yourself as well as everyone around you. We have taken audio samples of the wind and ocean before and put them into our songs. I don’t always throw nature samples into our tracks, but I like to try and build a sound biome for all the recordings.
AP: Your music can be very elegiac, but also at times visceral and almost confrontational, how did you arrive at this sound?
AR: I do often find myself writing about loss and the emotional effect it has on me. Same as so many other people, I use music as a way to process my emotions. I’m a pretty nostalgic person, and can lean angry from time to time, so it’s nice to create a space for myself where I can let that out.
RM: In terms of the instrumentals I think we all just bounce off each other and also try to take in the lyrical content that Alli is writing.
AP: Do you see yourselves in the sort of continuum of shoegaze and dreampop? Are there any contemporaries of yours that you feel like are chasing a similar muse?
AR: I can definitely see us sitting somewhere in there. We like to call ourselves a dream-rock band. Like dreampop, but at times a bit heavier. At the end of the day I just love a shimmer reverb. I think there’s also this sort of pleading element to our songs that I’m not really sure how to classify genre-wise. Some bands that come to mind would be Laveda, Wednesday, and Dirt Buyer.
RM: I definitely like to think that we take a lot of influence from those realms though I wouldn’t personally classify us as a shoegaze band or dream pop band, those styles of music definitely hold a huge spot in my heart and brain. Yes tons! A huge influence on writing “Silt” specifically were our friends in Her New Knife.
AP: How does living in Boston play into your band and how did it inform this song/the album?
AR: I’ve found so much inspiration from Boston bands over the years. I think there was a 3 month period when all I listened to was Krill. I used to run a house show venue and was super inspired by so many bands that I saw/booked there too. Boston is special because it’s this ever changing musical climate, that’s constantly having new life breathed into it. I think it’s made us feel very comfortable to try new things, and allow our music to grow and shift.
AC: Our band came up in the Allston DIY scene. I think we’ve found inspiration in a lot of other bands in the scene. Our friends in Clifford actually inspired us to experiment with time signatures a bit, specifically with the intro and verses of “Silt” being in 6/4.
AP: Where did you record the album? What is it about self-recording that you feel plays to your strengths as a band?
AC: We recorded the album at the studio our former keys player worked at called The Record Co. Self recording and self mixing, even though it was a lot of work, enabled us to get the album to sound exactly the way we wanted it to.
RM: I think we all had a very strong vision for what we wanted these songs to be like so recording it just us I think saved us from having to transfer that vision to someone else. I think you also get a ton of time to experiment and add things that if you were in a traditional studio you may be more inclined to just get everything done as fast as possible.
AP: Where and when you film the video for “Silt”? What was the experience like in making it?
AR: The video was shot, directed, and edited by Montréal based artist Maximum Blue. We had a couple of calls planning the video beforehand and discussed how we wanted it to be sort of an art house surrealist/fairytale. He came to Boston for a few days and we shot it! We all actually paper machéd our own masks. Throughout the video I’m running from this cult-like group of monsters that want me to join them. They each represent a different negative emotion (trickery, malaise, shame, apathy).
AC: We filmed the “Silt” video at the end of February last year. We filmed it in our house, Middlesex Fells and Ponyhenge. Maximum was a dream to work with.
AP: What does the rest of 2025 look like for Paper Lady?
AR: More singles, more candlelight, more longing, more laying in the dirt; releasing our album Idle Fate on May 9th, and touring this coming June.
AC: We are planning on moving to Brooklyn later in the year (ed note: tragic, there goes another one).
RM: We just want to play as much as humanly possible! We worked so hard on this album and I’m just so excited to be able to share it with everyone.
Paper Lady play a single release show for “Silt” on Saturday, February 8th at Deep Cuts. Tickets are available here.