For the follow up to their hit single “Trinity,” Paper Tongues have chosen the track “Get Higher,” a song that guitarist Joey Signa says is the most honest songs on the band’s album.

“The song came from a place of inspiration and almost improvisation honestly,” Signa told Alternative Addiction during a recent interview.  “[When writing that song] we found a certain hook that just caught everyone’s ear, and it just really came together.  To me, that is one of my favorite songs on the record.  It’s just a very pure song, and hopefully it has a bright future.”

First Listen: "Get Higher" by Paper Tongues

Paper Tongues just wrapped up a nationwide tour opening for Neon Trees.  The tour’s end marks the end of an 18 month stretch of almost non-stop touring for the band.  After a short break for the holidays, Signa says the band will likely be heading out again in January, although tour dates have not yet been finalized.

Even after over a year and a half of touring, Signa says the band is still improving their live sound together.

“We are always growing into what we are.  You always learn from a show, no matter what, there’s always something to improve on.”

Stay tuned to Paper Tongues MySpace page at: www.myspace.com/papertongues for a January Tour announcement.  The band’s self titled debut album is out now.

Paper Tongues’ December 14 show at Wild Horse Pass Casino was so compelling that upon buying the band’s eponymous album, my worry was that I’d been swept away by the moment and would be faintly embarrassed in the morning.

What we have here is a publicity still that I’m hoping A&M/Octone will not slap me for using, as not only did I not get good photos of the band in action, but even my food-porn photo of seafood pasta in vodka-cream sauce at Va Bene somehow got deleted from my phone. Va Bene is another experience where the service is so good that one worries about potential atrophy of the critical faculties — but honestly, this is not a horrible thing in a dinner or in a live show. The point is, after all, to enjoy it. Shall we?

As a band, Paper Tongues (listen) balances on the awkward cusp of authenticity and manufacture. The guys kind of knew each other from playing benefit gigs for the homeless on the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina. They were put together as a band by Randy Jackson. Yes, that Randy Jackson. The American Idol judge. It tours with convincing alt-rock acts: Paramore, Crash Kings, Switchfoot. (Indeed, it’s from @Paper_Tongues’ Twitter feed that I learned that I’d missed Temper Trap playing a Phoenix gig at… a chain Western-themed bar in Mesa? What levels of irony am I missing here?) The band officially approves of the food at Gallo Blanco (mad hipster points) and recognizes that the best reason to spend an extra day in Phoenix (other than maybe golf) is to get a new tattoo.

Maybe it’s time to introduce them: Jordan Hardee (drums), Clayton Simon (synths and back-up vocals), Cody Blackler (rhode keys and back-up vocals), Joey Signa (rhythm guitar), Daniel Santell (bass guitar, slow removal of upper garments, playing while balancing on drum kit), Devin Forbes (lead guitar and emergency banter), and Aswan North (lead vocals).

The best way to explain North is to imagine that Rob Thomas (whom I like okay on the radio) and Michael Jackson (whose music has never thrilled me, but I recognize its importance) went to the gene splicing lab and produced a son. That son — an infectiously charming young man — was raised by a virtuous mama who made sure her boy felt loved, encouraged him to sing along with country radio (I cheated and looked up this part), and inspired him to make music that can get alt-rock radio play but won’t scare the teachers on the high school prom committee.

The result is a big, bouncy rock/hip-hop fusion with mildly socially uplifting messages and a beat one can drive to without becoming so enthralled by complexity (or depressed by lyrics, given my tastes) that one misses one’s exit and ends up circling Deer Valley aimlessly, hoping for a QT and a clue. Since I think that’s what Paper Tongues is aiming for, that’s a compliment. (And it’s roughly where I put much of CHR radio that I find enjoyable, too.) If one likes rock and views hip-hop with suspicion, there are worse entry points than Paper Tongues’ paean to every musician’s urge to hit the road for Los Angeles and aim for the big time. If I ever have a six-year-old, it would be nice to own a few CDs that can be played in the car without fear of having kiddo sent home from school with a note for singing the songs — and Paper Tongues fills that niche, as the artists’ vision does not include dirty thoughts, much less dirty words.

(Indeed, there’s some suspicion that the band might almost, sort of be Christian rock. Even Christian music sites can’t decide — it’s that ambiguous. While telling me what opinions to hold about Jesus is a deal-breaker, symbolism that can read as Christian, but the story still works if you’re not on that train… well, that’s called The Chronicles of Narnia. If the song that could readily be interpreted as being about the holy trinity doesn’t raise your hackles, nothing else in the band’s current oeuvre is likely to. I’m feeling easy-going at the moment, possibly because I’ll visibly tolerate views different from mine in mainstream hip-hop if I’m interested in the musician’s overall perspective. (Yes, Kanye West, I’m talkin’ ’bout you and the obsession with cats who won’t stop catting around.))

Or I may feel easy-going because it was one heck of a good live performance. Aswan North lights up the stage. His persona has so much sparkle that sometimes he seems like the anime version of a rock star. He charms. He woos. He banters. He dances. He hops down into the audience — and here’s where we see the advantages of being at a career point at which his audiences don’t mob to touch him (or to grope him, despite the fact that he’s a good dancer). Because he has space, he has time not just to clasp hands with people in the seats but to look them in the eye and — for the girl at the end of my row — pull ‘em out into the aisle and dance with them.

Credit for being immensely poised performers should be extended to the rest of the band because they managed to sound tight through such severe difficulties with the sound system that North’s band introductions were interspersed with directions to the sound techs for what needed to be fixed for each member. Throughout the night, he’d be dancing and singing, with his left hand giving signals to the sound tech as if that was part of the dance moves. It sounds conspicuous when described, but I look for that sort of thing, and it was neatly done with minimal disruption to the flow of the show and enough charm to not come across as blaming the venue.

Musically — well, if you’re listening to the MySpace samples, you have the idea: soul-tinged raps underlaid with rock guitar riffs and tightly harmonized back-up vocals, breaking out now and again in soaring choruses. It has a beat. You can dance to it, though Paper Tongues would probably prefer you dance in the streets while celebrating the unity and potential of humanity than at the club, admiring booty. In that vein, it’s more metal, more consciously dance-friendly, and much less lyrically complex than, say, the works of Michael Franti and Spearhead; also, one is not called upon to say “hey.” While there’s a boyband-ish quality to the songs, some of them come with so many pre-choruses, transitions in and out of rapping, and other structural protrusions (the music equivalent of turrets, bay windows, and the odd flying buttress) that they have a nice alt-rock unpredictability.

While I failed at my goal of making enough notes for a setlist — it’s difficult to do at the kind of show at which one is supposed to be on one’s feet, clapping to the beat — I can testify that the set was well-paced. My impression was a rock-out opening; a recognizable radio song early in the first half; the major radio hit about half to two-thirds of the way through; the slightly more unconventional or obscure numbers in the second half of the show; the song that is getting television play late in the second half; and then close with the song that’s currently being promoted with a video (hint: van, left coast).

This means the audience sing-along was in the middle, as a bit of a breather for everyone; and one thing about big, bombastic, prom-night numbers is that they make terrific sing-alongs. North certainly deserved a breather: he has a muscular, flexible voice that can soar, belt, or growl, and he uses it aggressively. Reviews for the album are all over the map, running the gamut from raving that this is the future of rock (which, given the hip-hop fusion, the radio-friendly sound, and North’s knack for convincing Eskimaux that they need a new double-door refrigerator-freezer with a deluxe ice-maker, I wouldn’t bet against) to going hipper-than-thou about the cheesiness of North’s more earnest musical moments. If we want to talk cheesy — plenty of hipsters confess to an intermittent fondness for fondue.

It was fun. Some of the enjoyment — despite the sound problems — has to be credited to the casino itself. The parking and traffic management was the most efficient I’ve ever experienced. The theater itself was comfortable — bar inside the theater, with cup-holders at the seats! — and the staff were marvelous at making all the usual security checks feel like attentions to an honored guest rather than scrutiny of potential hijackers. So it felt particularly off-key when the frontman for the headliner, Neon Trees, sneered at playing a casino in Arizona with alcohol served, especially as he might better have taken up his dismay with his concert promoter/booker than with an audience of Arizonans willing to show up at a casino and order drinks.

But it’d be wrong to end such an upbeat show on a downer note, so let’s wrap up with the big sing-along song. Except that, as usual, there’s no video of the actual show I attended… so let’s do the big sing-along number twice, once in its usual form and once acoustic, just ’cause everything’s acoustic this holiday season.