Paul Michel Quiet State of Panic

Paul Michel is a reformed man. Several years ago you'd catch him drinking and smoking at a hardcore show in DC, either in the audience or on stage. You'll still find him drinking at a bar in DC, for sure, but when he's on stage, it's a whole other story. Michel has strayed from the more aggressive, biting musical style, but has kept the intensity of his sentiments since he started performing as a soloist. The aptly titled Quiet State of Panic takes Michel's passion and lays it in a controlled, lush, beautiful sonic landscape, complete with melodies, harmonies, and even some rests.

Instead of his old louder faster harder habits, Michel now likes to leave spaces, open to interpretation, in his songs. The album's opener "Alone All Day" shows the strengths of Michel's songwriting, layering the strong percussive elements with lilting vocals and raw lyrics. A lot of Michel's songs deal with a classic theme - love, or the loss thereof: the song "Wait" compares a relationships to prison, and witnesses the end, where both parties relinquish all the promises of honesty they had made to each other. The lyrics and the melody purposefully contradict one another, with an upbeat feeling of "Yes, it was worth it" and downtrodden lyrics, because "shit, it still sucks."

"The Fire Theft" includes just Michel and his guitar, and is a great exposition of Michel's stripped-down force as a solo performer; lyrically, the song explores the remembrance of the still-perfect relationship, before the reality of infidelity sinks in. When talking about his lyrics, Michel wryly asks "Can you tell I went through a breakup during the writing/recording of this album?"

So he's also reformed in his personal life, but this album proves he's not letting the breakup get the best of his creative spirit. Indeed, Michel's extensive background of musical pursuits has offered him sustenance. When he was young, Paul Michel began with flamenco

guitar lessons, also experimented with jazz, and then moved on to his harder rock days, playing in bands like Army of Me, The Out_Circuit and The Blue Line.

In addition to music, Michel tried his hand at writing, even majoring in journalism in college. The writing was never as much of a passion, as Michel started several novels that are still unfinished: "My attention span dictates that I have to concentrate on pop song lyrics. They're the only thing I'll stick with long enough to complete."

Maybe it's his love of coffee that keeps his attention on song lyrics, but more likely it's the fact that he's just so good at writing songs. Quiet State of Panic dips into a little bit of everything- brit pop, prog-rock, muted R&B, pure rock and even acoustic country all make appearances, although it still maintains an underlying cohesion. Paul Michel has grown up and changed. He has done an astounding job of taking influences from the hard and soft, the screaming and the melodic, and putting it into something that ultimately represents Paul Michel himself, unmistakably human.