Following extended layover, Paper Airplane again takes flight

The songs populating new Paper Airplane album In a Great Big Field were recorded a couple of years ago, with some having roots that extend back nearly a decade. As a result, the meaning of many of the tracks has continued to evolve and expand over time for the musicians, with singer and songwriter Ryan Horns acknowledging that verses he initially penned about deeply personal experiences have since taken on more worldly resonance.

Witness the loping title track, which finds Horns singing about lacking the time necessary “to clean up this mess,” and which originated amid his attempts to repair a damaged personal relationship. “And without getting into the specifics, it was this sense of trying to meet someone halfway, like, let’s meet in a big field, almost like a neutral zone,” said Horns, who will join Paper Airplane bandmates David Murphy, Adam Dowell, Brian Larcey, and Mark Sims in celebrating the album release at Rambling House on Friday, March 27, supported by Garbage Greek. “But when you put it into a collection of songs like this, it becomes more broad. … And I do think what we all need now is some sort of neutral zone, some sort of bubble where we can exist and just for a moment not feel so overwhelmed.”

On the band’s previous album, Othello, from 2019, Horns channeled his anger at the social and political realities of the day into a series of more outwardly directed songs. In a Great Big Field, shifts this focus inward, with Horns and Co. exploring concepts of resilience, the ways in which people are inevitably shaped by their environments, and how to best forge ahead even in those times when it feels like everything around you is crumbling. “There’s nothing I can help here,” the singer offers on “It’s Always Something,” and then adds, “I live the way I can.”

“And that song was written maybe 10 years ago, but when it became part of this collection, it began to fall under that self-protection blanket,” said Horns, who drafted an early version of the track about a time in college when he often felt overwhelmed in trying to discern precisely where and how he fit in. “But nowadays, I think you’re right, there is this sense of almost throwing your hands up. … I think a lot of these songs started as this collection of vague sentences that made me feel something. And I write the songs very fast, so I don’t really have the time to think about it. It’s just this is what I want to say, and then it’s done and we’re learning the song. And then I sing it out all the time, and at some point, it begins to make sense to me.”

This is particularly true of In a Great Big Field, which Horns described as “a collection of singles.” drawing out a contrast between the album and more thematically cohesive efforts such as Othello and the band’s already in progress next album, which the singer said similarly centers on a unifying idea. “So, this current album sort of represents a growth period,” Horns said. “We’ve been playing music together for years and now we’re sort of venturing into that next stop.”

The comfort level developed between the players is apparent throughout their latest, the musicians crafting a series of deeply melodic indie-rock tracks in which every element feels as though it exists in service of the song. Witness the album-closing “In the Light of the Day,” for one, which folds in atmospheric strains of church organ, ghostly recordings, and the steady strum of guitar, Horns leaning into this patient backdrop to address his fears of a world he sees spinning out of control.

“We’ve really evolved as a band from when we first started playing together,” Horns said. “It’s always been about writing songs, but it’s become more like a team, a collaborative, where we show up and play on each other’s records. It’s five of us guys, but we may play on an album that Brian wants to make, or Mark Sims may put out an album and we’ll help him do that. So, we all kind of help each other. And the songwriting has come along in that same way, where I’ll bring in a song and I don’t care what they play. Just play what you feel. And I think that’s really translated into us becoming a much better band.”

This growth has coincided with the leaps Horns has taken in his own life, with the musician recalling how his social anxieties were so bad as a child that there were times he struggled to leave the house. Even then, however, the frontman knew he wanted to pursue music, so he enrolled in public speaking courses, forced himself to open up, forced himself into situations that upset his sense of comfort.

“There was just this point it was like, ‘I know I have to do this, so I better start working on it,’” Horns said. “And now this is maybe the seventh album I’ve made, and I played my first show in ’97, and some of the things that used to seem overwhelming don’t give me anxiety anymore. And when I’m onstage, I feel more alive.”