Doubting Paris – The Things We Don’t Talk About

Doubting Paris – The Things We Don’t Talk About – EP Review

Full disclosure, I’m reviewing a record that was technically released back in 2024, but sometimes you need to take a look back in order move forward, right?  The question is – how far back do I take you here?  Obviously I can talk about how we’ve featured the music of Doubting Paris on the SBS Podcast in the past…I can point you towards putting a live video from them on SBS Live This Week and in our SBS Separated series from last year – I call tell you all that good stuff, and maybe a few of you out there have even seen & heard the evidence of that along the way and can verify it to be true.  Oh, if only there was a way to find out *cough if what I’m saying is *cough *cough true *cough *click the hotlinks above…

Anyhow.  The answer is, we’ve been in their corner the entire time.  My love for the music of Doubting Paris started long ago, and technically it never stopped.  Some twenty-plus years ago, they put out a self-titled record that absolutely CRUSHED, and speaking as objectively as I possibly can, believe me – it still holds up strong to this very day.  In fact, I loved that album SO MUCH, that when I saw they were playing a show at the Media Club in Vancouver, I took my wife to that concert…only she wasn’t my wife yet, and it was our very first date.  So YES – this band has been, and always will be, special to me, for that reason and so many others.  More recently, in what seemed like a moment straight outta the blue, that same wonderful wife of mine bought tickets to Doubting Paris playing the Blarney Stone in Vancouver last year.  Honestly, I didn’t know that they were actively playing ANY shows live, given that their two main members Tim & Ben actually reside in entirely different provinces.  To say I was stoked to go to the show would be an understatement.  The fact that I was able to meet them, buy this very record here in review, and get an autograph from them?  That was like LIFE ITSELF coming around full circle in the greatest of ways.  You know how many times I spun their debut album?  Probably more times than you’ve listened to your FAVORITE album.  Songs like “August,” “Paparazzi,” “Throwing Punches,” “Queen Of The Radio,” “Safe” – I mean, the whole record is BRILLIANT – and truthfully, the soundtrack of my life would not be complete without all the music they’ve released.

I’ll tell you this much though…this ain’t my first rodeo.  When a band you haven’t really heard from much in the past several years shows up again, there’s almost always a reason…and that reason is almost always NEW MUSIC.  So not only did I walk away that night of their last concert in Vancouver with a signed record of their most recent recording, The Things We Don’t Talk About EP, which is now FRAMED and lives above my head where I sit in the living room of my apartment – but in talking to Ben and Tim, I learned there was MORE music on the way.  If you look online RIGHT NOW, you’d be able to find amazing new singles by the band like “Come Home” and “All The Shit I’ve Done” – and I promise you, we’ll get to those later next month.  I was lucky enough to run into Tim randomly at the last show Pedro The Lion put on at The Biltmore, we reconnected again, we’ve recently even talked on the phone, and without saying TOO MUCH…I can confirm that I know there is even more music still to come out.  That’s all I’m going to say for the moment, but rest assured, I’ve got nothing but “Good Intentions” and every plan to keep on shouting about the resurgence of Doubting Paris.  You never know…I might just have some special stuff in the works…interviews…new shows to attend and new footage to show you – we’ll see what I can find out.  Heck, after inquiring about one of the songs on this very EP in our recent conversation – a song called “Regardless” that they’d posted a clip of from what looked like a seriously amazing and intimate venue – I had to ask if there was some way I could see them play there to maybe film a song or two there as well.  Of course, I had to make an ass of myself and ask if “Regardless” was a new tune…which you’d think I’d know it wasn’t as a fan that has listened to this EP literally dozens of times.  My apologies Tim…we’re all victims of the technological age in that regard…we push play, and we don’t absorb the details and song names like we did back when I was growing up in the liner notes era.  I mean, we notice some of them…like…I can tell you all about the night I had in the early winter of 2025 where I spun their song “Garden” from this EP for about five or six hours straight with no breaks or interruptions as I crashed out into a deep depression, but…maybe we’ll save that story for another time, or at least later on in this review.

Right now, I just want to do my part and make sure that you have listened to this last record before you go out and scour the internet to listen to the new singles they’ve released on the oh-so-hard-to-find links that I’ve probably put at the bottom of this article.  Like, right at the bottom.  Go ahead and scroll.

It’s the robust sound of “Color Of Your Eyes” that hits you first on this EP, soon followed by the innate sincerity of Tim’s vocals and the way he writes such down to earth lyrics that reflect imagery you can see in your mind as he sings.  He’s always seemed remarkably grounded to me and genuinely in touch with his emotions on a level most of us should aspire to, and “Color Of Your Eyes” is as stellar of an example as any Doubting Paris tune would be in highlighting how real and vivid and relatable his lyrics are.  I’m not here to claim that “Color Of Your Eyes” would necessarily make the impact that “August” might have on ya back in the day…but I’m not saying that’s impossible either.  “Color Of Your Eyes” is an undeniably strong cut, especially when you consider the fragility of Tim’s lyrics and the gentle tremor in his voice as he sings them.  That’s the thing about Doubting Paris though – they don’t shy away from the hardest of hard feelings they experience – they dive right into them.  They analyze the impact on their emotions, knowing full well that somebody out there somewhere will relate to every single note, tone, and word they’ll hear.  For myself personally as a longtime fan of this band, hearing “Color Of Your Eyes” was everything I wanted to hear.  It’s a song that realistically shows us the side of a band that has seen some shit in their lifetime…you know, matured and battle-ready for this next chapter that lies ahead of them.  As breakable as they’ve always sounded, I think we can all glean from the fact they’re still standing here with us today and still making incredible music, that they’ve always been more resilient than they let on.

I love listening to the band transition from verse to chorus on “Wide Awake” – it just sounds so natural.  It’s funny…a lot of the thoughts and feelings that they explore on this particular tune are exactly what I personally experienced in listening to “Garden” last year in the aforementioned mental breakdown.  As with so many songs that Doubting Paris has written throughout the years, there’s a level of authenticity on their part that translates directly to a level of comfort on our side of the speakers.  You listen to these guys, and you think, man…they’ve BEEN THERE.  They’ve felt the strongest of feels.  They’ve weathered those same emotional storms.  They likely grew up on the same staggeringly powerful content of the 90s with bands like Counting Crows & Gin Blossoms supplying something that wasn’t Grunge and wasn’t the fake plastic Pop we’d been spoon fed for years.  Like I’ve told you from the start, this band has their own grounded perspective that is only achieved through the ups & downs of experience, and really living life.  You can’t listen to a song like “Wide Awake” and not find yourself relating to at least some of what Tim is singing about…and chances are, it’ll be more than you’d think.  He’s got a wonderfully poetic style in how he writes his words, and he knows precisely how to pluck those bittersweet heartstrings of yours to maximum effect.  Coupled with Ben’s remarkable gift to bring out the gripping emotions in the music they make, Doubting Paris quickly proves they’re every bit as sharp as they’ve ever been on this last EP.

There are “So Many Reasons” to listen to this band, and indeed this particular record.  It’s interesting to listen to the songs on The Things We Don’t Talk About and how they relate to its core theme.  Like, when you think about Tim’s words on this cut, and from what you just heard on “Wide Awake” as well, you get the sense that he’s got a real understanding of what it’s like to feel like life itself is on pause, and you’re just waiting for that something special to happen.  Whether it’s the girl you like to come around at long last, or a freakin’ superhero to save the planet, we can find ourselves waiting, watching, and observing instead of being out there attacking each & every day for everything it’s got if we’re not too careful.  Take it from one who knows!  By the time I blinked and caught my breath, I was already in my mid-40s, and how the hell did that happen when I feel like I’m still just scratching the very surface of what I can accomplish?  “So Many Reasons” examines things like that, and focuses even harder on what keeps us busier than we should be, as well as how that line of thinking is more of an excuse than it is a reality.  You know you can relate.  How many times have you been too busy to do whatever, only to find yourself watching a show on the couch or doom-scrolling your phone instead?  Probably more than you’d like to admit if you’re like everyone else – hence, this subject definitely belongs in the category of The Things We Don’t Talk About.  From my perspective, which I’ll fully admit could entirely be projection, this song also examines another crucial aspect of a relationship in any form, which is the care you put into it, and what happens when you don’t put in your share.  With our own personal timelines being so vastly askew from each other to begin with in a world filled with unanswered phone calls and text messages, I think it’s super important to remember that just because YOU might feel you’re ready to reconnect with someone at long last, THEY might not be…like, at all.  And how sad is that?  Especially when it’s such an avoidable scenario when you properly value the people in your life and the time you should spend with them, right?  “So Many Reasons” is a perfect reminder to hug the living daylights out of those you love in the time that you have to do it.  Don’t go to the grave pretending you were too busy to get involved.  There’s “always a reason,” or an excuse, if you’re willing to look for one…but you need to decide which of those two things you’re looking for more.  A reason to be around, or an excuse to hide yourself away.

Anyhow.  You regular readers know me – I like to write out my theories and engage with the art as best I can, but I’d be the last to tell you that I get everything right, or that I know what an artist is really writing about.  In fact, the very next track is a perfect example of that…and it’s also a perfect example of how that doesn’t always matter in the music you’re listening to.  Sometimes, you only get a piece of a song that really connects…sometimes that’s all you need.  Sometimes it’s not about what you hear, but how you hear it.  For example, a song like “Garden” has multiple ways you could interpret its meaning, and obviously Tim is the only one that really knows what it’s actually about – everything we could say from the outside looking in is really just a guess.  That being said, I got this tattoo on my arm fairly recently, which features some artwork from The National and their song “Pink Rabbits.”  I had someone ask me why I got it, and what the song was all about…and I realized after stumbling through a bad answer that didn’t cover half of what I’d wanted to say, that there was really no answer at all.  More often than not, we have NO IDEA what a song is really about – but we DO know how they make us FEEL.  My answer should have been that…that there is no real answer at all, but there IS a feeling…and that’s what that song provides me with that no other song can do in the same way.  “Garden” is a song that also does that for me, albeit obviously with a whole different feeling…and fuck if it wasn’t the kind of devastating in the way I really needed one night in October last year, when I sat alone with my head down on my desk, listening to this song over and over and over again, clinging onto it like it was my freakin’ lifeline.  In all truth, it was that night.  I needed whatever the feeling was that “Garden” was able to identify in me through the sting of its beautiful melody.  When Tim would sing “we’re only here for a while,” I’d sputter out some more tears and mouth the words, knowing I didn’t have the voice to say the things I wanted to say in that moment or even the ability to sing along with him.  That’s the power of a great song though y’all…it can say the things we can’t.  It can reveal feelings, thoughts, and emotions that we don’t have a clue how to even describe.  It can cause an ark’s-worthy flood of tears before you even have the time to fully brace yourself, because the lyrics or sound or both are beaming a reflection of something that’s been eluding you right atcha, without apology.  Now…having grown up on loving sad music and a long history of depression, I’m well versed in how IMPORTANT it can be to connect with these kinds of overwhelming feelings…and I’m thankful that I was able to reach for “Garden” at the time where I really needed it.  All personal stories aside, objectively speaking, it’s just a genuinely remarkable song.  The verses will have that raw emotional edge and weary-spirited rasp you’d find in something like the Counting Crows, and the chorus hook should very well bring tears to faces other than just my own.  Seeing them play this song live before I’d even heard it on The Things We Don’t Talk About was a really memorable moment in time…that was exactly when I realized that Doubting Paris still had the X-factor.

So…to circle back around if you’re still with me here…it was obviously even harder for me to remember the song “Regardless” by name, because it came after what is likely my favorite song on this entire EP and therefore in the toughest spot in the lineup to fill, at least in my opinion.  I’ll admit, it doesn’t help that much when you end up sitting on one track for hours on repeat before you move on either – part of the fault is definitely mine as to why I couldn’t recall “Regardless” by name.  What I CAN tell you now after having had many additional listens to this record, is that it’s truly as memorable as any of the cuts on this EP would be if you were to spin the whole thing, as intended.  I can also tell you this – make sure to head over to the Doubting Paris page at Instagram as well (*ahem…links at the bottom, right where they always are) – you’ll see that snippet I was talking about where they were playing this song in the most unreal setting.  As it turns out, I’ve learned after talking with Tim that this is in fact, the very spot where Doubting Paris practices and refines their tunes!  GO to their page right after you’re finished reading this rant about how much I love this record, and SEE FOR YOURSELF – this place looks AMAZING!  You wanna look at a location that authentically contributes to the shape of a sound?  This is as prime of an example of that as I’ve ever seen.  Part of me assumed that was going to be the Doubting Paris jam space for that very reason – it LOOKS like they SOUND – how freakin’ cool is that?  They’re probably leaning a little closer towards terrain you’d find Toad The Wet Sprocket playin’ in on this song, but if you’re familiar with their era, you know that fits right in with bands like the other bands I’ve compared them to.  I suppose you could make an argument that this is the most ‘Rock’ you’ll find any song being on this particular record…it’s a lot more bold and upbeat in its pace and such I guess…but if you think that Doubting Paris has left behind their classic push/pull bittersweet style of songwriting…think again.  Having said that, I could see “Regardless” being a fan favorite in that it’s got a bit more universal appeal.  Like, what – you DON’T want to all be as devastated as you can possibly be when you listen to music?

Fine then.  I get it.  I understand.  In that respect, you might be more into the final two cuts of The Things We Don’t Talk About just a little more than you dig the first four tracks, because the vibe does lighten up at least a little bit in sound, even if it won’t fully relent in the weight of its lyrical content.  Full shout-outs to the band at-large…the drums have been a perfect fit into the songs on this record, the backing vocals on the last song “You Deserve” have been a noticeable highlight…and of course, the main core of Ben and Tim have been as exceptional as they’ve always been.  Truly, as a longstanding fan of just about everything they’ve ever done, I’m not just polishing their nuts and giving them a good ol’ glazing because it feels good – you regular readers here know me much better than that.  If I had something to say, I’d say it.  Like…I dunno…maybe the production on “Garden” could have come out just a little bit better than it is in comparison to the rest of the songs?  Sure – I’d listen to that argument, but big fucking deal…the ideas…the songs…the musicianship…the overall execution in the material, has been nothing short of excellent, and right down to the end, these tracks deliver the real emotional punch in the nuts you’d want to find from Doubting Paris, and that only they could provide.  “You Deserve” was a completely solid ending to what’s been a genuinely exceptional record, made with heart, made with true sincerity…made with the fearlessness that it takes to really explore who we are on an emotional level without any pretentious bullshit.  Doubting Paris is among the most REAL, full stop, straight up – this is a band that can proudly stand behind every word, note, and tone they write and record.  Bonus points for them shouting out one of my favorite places on Earth – San Diego – in this last track called “You Deserve” – you can feel the tributary nature of the story in the song, and the road trip it would all come with.  This whole record has had a remarkable visual component to it, all completely due to the way that Tim writes his lyrics in such a relatable way that you can see these scenes he creates in your mind as you listen.  There ain’t a hair out of place on The Things We Don’t Talk About…it’s a genuinely amazing record, and you get nothing but apologies from me because I should have brought your attention to it much sooner than I have.  Better late than never, as they say…and I promise ya…we’ve got a lot more to come on Doubting Paris in the future ahead as they surge into their prime in what’s assuredly going to be their most exciting chapter ahead.  We’ll be there for as many moments of it as we can – they’re truly one of my favorite bands of all-time – that’s not hyperbole y’all, that’s a fucking FACT.

Keep your eyes on these pages of ours, we’ll be reviewing their latest singles from THIS YEAR coming up here in August – until then, make sure you stay connected with Doubting Paris by visiting their official pages below!

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/doubtingparis

Bandcamp:  https://doubtingparis.bandcamp.com

Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/artist/1igws0cRurElEXTpUXJLEr

Apple Music:  https://music.apple.com/us/artist/doubting-paris/257475709

YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doubtingparis

Multi-link:  https://doubtingparis.komi.io

Click this link right here to be the next artist or band featured here at sleepingbagstudios, because hey – why not?  All the cool kids are doing it.