The last time I heard anything from Paper Moon was a couple of years ago, when the Winnipeg-based group released their debut, One Thousand Reasons To Stay, One Reason To Leave. They were just one of the many bright lights in the Endearing Records stable, alongside the likes of Julie Doiron, Novillero (now on Mint Records) and the Meligrove Band. They managed to score some success in Japan (now how come we don’t hear that cliche as much as we used to?) and a bunch of soundtrack spots for various television shows (now how come we… oh, wait, we hear that all the time) thanks to their upbeat, keyboard-fueled power pop. By all rights, I should’ve loved Paper Moon, just like the critics and the Canadian pop lovers did.

And yet, no. “Mercury Is Clearly Opposing Neptune” aside, One Thousand Reasons To Stay never stuck for me. Since then, there have been a couple of similar acts that have also failed recently to leave much of an impact: the Gay, Mates of State, A.C. Newman, Immaculate Machine, and even the New Pornographers’ Electric Version. If you were wondering why I never bothered to write anything about Twin Cinema, now you know why.

So now it’s 2006 and lo and behold, Paper Moon are back with Broken Hearts Break Faster Every Day. If nothing else, Paper Moon could retire now and make a living coming up with quirky titles for other bands; it’s clear from “Your Thesaurus Won’t Help You Now” and “Broken Hearts Break Faster Every Day” that Paper Moon have a knack for this sort of thing. But what about the music? I’ve only heard a couple of tracks, but the scouting report suggests the band has toned down the sugar. The arrangements are more refined and the keyboards no longer stand out so much; the high-octane giddiness of “Mercury Is Clearly Opposing Neptune” is gone, but so is material like the grating opening to “Sno-Globe,” a song I can never bear to listen to even though it commits no other grave errors. But what’s especially interesting to me is the band’s newfound embrace of minor chord progressions. “String of Blinking Lights” is a perfect example of the slight shift in approach; it feels more accomplished and hits with greater weight than anything off One Thousand Reasons To Stay.

The trade-off, of course, is that Paper Moon sound a bit more adult contemporary these days. But this is an approach that worked well for former Kindercore band Call and Response when taken to an extreme; there’s no reason why Paper Moon couldn’t use the same playbook.