Boyhood, the debut from Wichita, Kansas collective Paper Airplanes, is a set of densely imagined remembrances of youth from the distant vantage point of adulthood. The band has no shortage of dramatic ambition on its debut album-- originally released to little notice in 2005-- and leaves no section of the unconscious unmined as its multiple narrators struggle to understand the fallibility of memory and the complicated pathways of personal history. The first line of "Julius" encapsulates the album's central narrative struggle: "From the start, I've lacked narration."
Singer Marcus Stoesz's strangled cry-- which variously resembles (when it emerges from the oft-muddy mix) the strident inelegance of Okkervil River's Will Sheff and the winsome, wide-eyed humanism of the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne-- is the litmus test for tolerance of Boyhood. On album opener "Fences", Stoesz emo-wails "sometimes the world could use more self-control" over a miniature military march, which both explains the album cover's boy-soldier drawing and renders the Welcome to the Black Parade and Funeral comparisons appropriate. A dramatic mid-song switch into a frenzy of strings and cymbal washes dissolves back into the song proper, demonstrating a tendency toward proggish, constantly shifting structures that distinguishes Boyhood from its peers.
Self-control is the last issue on Paper Airplanes' agenda, and expressionistic excess is the driving force behind the record. Sepia-toned pastoralism continually gives way to moments of feverish emotion as the record's characters strive to make connections between the past and present, burdened by wanderlust and regret. On "Appalachia", which moves from a basic acoustic pluck to a wash of strings, a man seeks validation for his disobedient memory, and proper explanation for his inexplicable attraction to a place he may only have visited in a dream. Likewise, the record ends with the plinking electronics of "Suburban Sprawl", which recounts a disorienting feeling of stagnation after a move to a new home, questioning "precisely why I sink deep with images of traveling." The last minute of the song, and album, is a tranquil bit of domestic escapism-- the kind of music that would score a 1950s home appliance commercial-- and feels slightly sinister in relation to what's come before it.
True to its title, Boyhood relies on moments from adulthood to trigger unconscious memories of the innocent formative years of life, like an emo version of John Lennon's woozy reverie "She Said, She Said". For their part, however, Paper Airplanes rely on dense, occasionally impenetrable wordplay that, on the page, reads like a stream-of-consciousness diary entry. "True Men Like You Men" remembers an ultra-specific childhood moment: "I love a hot cup of joe/ No sam you're not old enough/ What a darling, ha ha ha," and "Curious Phantasm" longs for the impulsiveness of youth from an adult position of forced conformity, through the lyric "Oh, I wish we had known not to grow up so soon... We're so typical, I'm not permitted to change my ways, they'll lead to my death."
The innocence, impulsiveness, and occasional torment of youth have provided inspiration for songs and albums since the earliest moments of the rock era, from Brian Wilson's "In My Room" through The Wall and Nirvana's "Sliver" and "Been a Son". Boyhood is Paper Airplanes' attempt to situate themselves in this canon, and it both succeeds and fails on the strength of its attempted scope. It's a busy, often confusing record made by a young band intent on proving its maturity, which in the end, feels very appropriate.
