Kiss Me Again

Do you remember Sixpence None the Richer? Barely? Well, let me jog your memory. That band had a megahit in 1998 with a song called “Kiss Me” that showed up in at least one rom-com flick (She’s All That), and feels like it showed up in a whole whack more, so pervasive and all over the radio it was. Now, imagine that another group came along from Wales and rewrote that song something like 13 times over, just, you know, without the Christian rock overtones. That’s essentially what you get with Paper Aeroplanes’ debut album. To further the Sixpence connection, there’s a song here called “Pick Me”, which rubs a little close to you-know-what. The Day We Ran Into the Sea is cute, sunny, acoustically-strummed folksy country-pop with a Celtic tinge that basically follows a cookie-cutter formula. How cookie-cutter? Well, the lead single is called “Cliché”. If you can get past the fact that the songs all kind of sound the same, it mostly works. The main attraction is vocalist Sarah Howells—who does recall Sixpence’s Leigh Nash a little—singing as though she’s possessed by angels, bringing messages of love and love lost to listeners, the majority of whom are probably going to be pining young women still searching for an identity.

Essentially, The Day We Ran Into the Sea is pleasant musical wallpaper, and the kind of record I’ll probably wind up playing some Sunday morning with the black gold percolating in the coffee pot while eggs and bacon fry on the stove. This is friendly, inoffensive stuff, perhaps making it a little on the bland side, but it will put you in a good mood, and I would be willing to bet my next paycheck that we’ll be hearing Paper Aeroplanes in some Drew Barrymore movie in the near future.

• Multiple songs MySpace