Some songs show up knocking on the door, and others walk in like they already live there. “Paper Crane,” the first single off Ram and the Bull , Atticus Sorrell’s sophomore record, out June 26, is the second kind.
From the first chords, you know exactly where you’re standing: that crossroads between today’s indie and the warm 70s groove Sorrell has been refining since his days in The Be Colony (a former member of the band).
What grabs you most is the guitar, personally that’s what hooked me. It’s got that funky touch reminiscent of Parcels, but without losing today’s relaxed indie texture. It’s not an accessory, it’s the soul of the song: present the whole way through, in conversation with the vocals rather than just backing them up. That relationship between guitar and voice is the track’s biggest win, neither one competes with the other, and together they create something that feels natural, almost improvised, even though it’s clearly very deliberate.
Makes sense coming from the person playing it: Sorrell trained in audio recording and has spent over a decade playing throughout the Midwest, first with Soft N’ Heavy and later fronting The Be Colony. That experience shows in the way he moves the guitar between melodic and rhythmic without it ever sounding like a technical exercise.
He describes himself as “an amalgamation of 70s radio,” and here he’s not overselling it. There are echoes of George Harrison floating through the song, but none of it feels like a forced nostalgic nod. Sorrell isn’t dressing up an old song with new production, he’s using that sonic vocabulary as a starting point for something that sounds completely current. It’s a song with a lot of feeling, but no melodrama: it balances the modern and the 70s-leaning without needing extreme gestures in either direction. The result is warm, accessible, and genuinely lovely to listen to.
As a preview of Ram and the Bull, which Sorrell describes as a tribute to the marks lovers leave behind, “Paper Crane” delivers exactly what it should. If you’re into Parcels, if you think Harrison still has things to teach today’s indie scene, or you’re just looking for a song that’s easy to fall for on first listen, give it space in your playlist 🙂
“Paper Crane” is out now on Bandcamp and other platforms. Ram and the Bull drops June 26.
