The debut release “This is Life” is a six track mini album, that starts and finishes with sounds from around the home. With lyrics about love, family, death, sickness, war and forgiveness, all these songs are from the heart. Produced by friend Heath McCurdy (Epicure), Paul’s humble guitar strumming has been transformed into beautiful tunes.

Rave Magazine May 2008

Written by David Fannon

Nice guys take for ever to finish 

Goodbye Stereo is Ballarat musician Paul Mah’s baby, a project that has apparently been ten years in the making. Luckily for Mah, his ten years of meticulous hard work has at least paid off in the artistic sense, his debut album This Is Life is quite the pleasant listen. A yieldingly diffident mixture of quiet indie-pop characterises this musician’s quiet approach to song-writing. Admittedly, there has been a spate of wince-worthy acoustic based music ever since the breakthrough of Dashboard Confessional and Pete Murray. However, this songwriter has a level of maturity, integrity and articulacy that is far beyond his own years and his contemporaries. Of course there are the obvious drawbacks to such an earnest and nice release. That is, it may be a little sugary to some, perhaps a little too withdrawn and innocent. However, and don’t correct if I’m wrong, but that’s kind of the appeal to this genre of music isn’t it?

Goodbye Stereo ~ This is Life

Rhythms Magazine January 2008

Written by Martin Jones.

“Apparently its taken singer/song writer Paul Mah a decade to gather the material and means to get a substantial selection of his songs on disc and out into the big wide world. That would certainly explain the maturity in his singing and songwriting.

I guess you’d be tempted to put Mah’s work under the Goodbye Stereo moniker in the dreaded "acoustic chill-out" category, such are the soothing effects of his gentle vocals and lilting meodies. At it’s worst, This is Life may be guilty of being a little too pretty and earnest for its own good.

But look a little closer and you’ll discover a musical eloquence and, most importantly, integrity to this collection that are reminiscent of softly spoken guitar based singer songwriters like Elliot Smith or even our own Art of Fighting.

Epicure’s Heath McCurdy is responsible for the pretty piano and percussion that lift’s Mah’s vocal and guitar creations into the radio friendly realm, adding just enough guts so that the songs would not seem to sonically meek on FM radio. While, on the one hand, that enhances the chance that This is Life will get to radio, it also polishes off a few of the rougher edges that would have given it a little more personality.

The mini-albums six tracks are all exquisite acoustic pop songs "Autumn Lullaby" boasting a chorus dramatic enough to propel it to TV series soundtrack potential, and “Come home soon” and “This is Life” unwinding like a walk down a country lane on a drzzly day”