GQ Magazine – Review

FIRST TAKE // Music
Album: “New Pagan Love Song”
By Stephanie Davis

On his third album, Paul Brill stuffs in so many electronic and organic sounds – xylophone, strings instruments, cut-up beats – it’s surprising he has room for lyrics. And while the music is engrossing, it’s his sly, pretty voice and acidic take on life – that sucks you in
. Cuts like “Weekday Bender” and “The Troubled Life of Herschel Grimes” are catchy enough to make popping pills and slapping people around sound like jolly undertakings,

…could have been the soundtrack to a lost Wes Anderson film.

but Brill can also fall convincingly into a ballad like “Everything I Believe in,” which is slinkier and closer to a soppy Coldplay sound. Zooming in on life’s ironies and the futility of relationships, Pagan sounds like it could have been the soundtrack to a lost Wes Anderson film.