Writer’s block has a way of sneaking up on you. Ironically, expectation—whether it’s from external sources awaiting the next morsel of new output or the self-manufactured fear of falling behind—can oftentimes become the root cause of creative stagnation. That was recently the case for Next Paperback Hero, the stripped-down indie rock project of Milwaukee musician Nathan Honoré.
Following 2021’s attention-grabbing album, Morning Skies & Heavy Eyes, and 2022’s notable Nowhere To Run EP that each earned local press and helped bring on a steady string of one-off shows and regional festival appearances, Honoré’s artistic progress was suddenly frozen by two words that combine to form one broad and sometimes debilitating question: what’s next?
Finding no inspiration feeding lines and guitar parts into the recording software at his home studio for the umpteenth time, Honoré decided to dust of his old four-track cassette recorder at some point. With that, expectations suddenly vanished and the creative block crumbled.
“Two hours felt like 10 minutes and I couldn’t remember the last time I had that much fun making music,” Honoré says in a press release. “It started to become clear that I needed to go back to how I made music in high school, embrace the imperfection, follow that feeling of fun, and not give a shit if anyone else liked it.”
With that loose and homespun approach in mind, Honoré rearranged and rewrote nearly every song he had been working on for his next record in a few weeks and started recording on his trusty Tascam four-track. The final product is Waves, an eight-song collection of cozy compositions that—quite literally, since there were no edits or punch-ins used on any track—capture an unbroken moment in time. Adding to Honoré’s soft melodies, honest lyricism, and deconstructed instrumentation on guitar, bells, piano, and organ is sparse-yet-significant accompaniment by Jon Harris Jr. on drums and Honoré’s wife Kristen’s background vocals. Josh Evert at Silver City Studios also mastered the self-recorded, self-mixed effort.
Between hopeful, upbeat offerings like “Tip Of My Toes,” the blustery and beautiful “Water Street,” and the ivory-tickling closing ballad “Pilot Light Lullabies,” Waves might very well be Next Paperback Hero’s best work yet. With the expectation-shedding help of his forgotten four-track, Honoré didn’t just find his way around his creative block. He opened up an entirely new artistic avenue that brought him somewhere spectacular.
You can listen to Next Paperback Hero‘s Waves album below, stream it wherever you listen to music, or buy it on Bandcamp now.