Fifteen years ago, Paul Hashemi made the difficult decision to leave his music career behind. Broadsided by job loss while being his family’s main provider, he had to focus on providing for his wife and two toddlers. Playing music was relegated to strumming and singing at preschool Christmas parties.
Fast forward to the pandemic lockdown of 2020, Paul is in a different place with the security, stability, and time that was missing years before. He set up a home studio and began writing, recording, and releasing his first new music in years as Faint Halos. This summer, the Philadelphia-based singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist is releasing Faint Halos’s debut full-length album, I can see a million lights. The emotive and uplifting 10-song collection revisits Paul’s organic, band-in-a-room roots, inviting favorable comparisons to Jason Isbell, Glen Hansard, Sturgill Simpson, and Wilco.
“I was really scared back then. Music became a luxury,” Paul recalls. “Once I could get back to it, I realized I had much more to say than I did back then. When you have scars, you have more to work with. I found myself writing these melancholy songs with rays of hope in the darkness.”
Paul’s journey in music is vast and winding. He formally studied classical piano, viola, and violin, but while preparing for music school auditions, his teacher looked at his hands and said the grueling seven-hours-a-day practice sessions would give him carpal’s tunnel syndrome. Instead, he opted for engineering school, but pursued music by playing in bands, teaching himself guitar, mandolin, and how to sing.
In the 1990s, Paul toured the East Coast college and club circuit with a rock band, and when that band dissolved, he trudged it out with another band. He eventually left music altogether until he began writing and recording in his home studio. Those recordings became Faint Halos’s inaugural pair of EP releases, and they favored an ethereal, electronic pop-rock feel with an emphasis on synth sounds and atmospherics.
On Faint Halos’s debut album, Paul aimed to shift to a more organic feel, with songs that could translate to solo acoustic performance, fleshed out to full-band proportions. The dynamic arrangements bring to life the song’s emotional and narrative arcs with lyrical lead guitar melodies and solos and nuanced rhythm section work. Each track showcases multiple crafts as Paul handled all the album’s singing, playing, producing, and mixing. His daughter adds beautifully breezy harmony vocals on select tracks.
The songs on the album are introspective, and explore the responsibilities of modern adulthood. “Being a dad has given me a lot to say. People rely on you to find your way and guide them into finding their way,” Paul shares.
The hopeful opener, “The Miracle Comes,” opens the album with shimmering grandeur. This song captures an intergenerational dialogue on social justice progress—are we a more compassionate and tolerant society today? The musings all funnel into the thought-provoking refrain: When the miracle comes/And drags our dirty world into the light/Will there be enough love to go around to us all?When the miracle comes/Will we find out we waited way too long/To burn it down and build it up?/Burn it down, build it up.
“Skyline Hill” is a sleekly emotive pop-rock track perfect for modern rock radio. Inspired by the nighttime view of Philadelphia from the famous Mann Center, Paul sings: I can see a million lights / just can't remember which one of them is you / maybe I'll find out tonight after doing this a thousand times / that maybe I never knew.
The album concludes with “Backroads,” an elegantly-essential song adorned with acoustic guitars, sparse drums, crystalline piano, and Paul’s s sweetly weary vocals. It’s a song that pines for the freedom of youth while also holding fast that those carefree moments can happen in adulthood, they just take a little more effort to find.
Next up, Paul is in rehearsals readying his band for gigging, and as he prepares to take this music to the stage, he’s pensive and hopeful. “I feel this urgency to share these songs with the world. They have messages people need to hear, and I never felt this way before,” he says.