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Papercuts | You Can Have What You Want

Gnomonsong (2009)
By DEVIN KING  |  April 14, 2009
3.0 3.0 Stars

090417_Papercuts_m

Hidden under reverb and aggressive analog production, the first sung lyrics on You Can Have What You Want belie what seems to be a cheery record title: "Once we walked in the sunlight three years ago this July."

Full of wistful regret, Jason Robert Quever, the main dude behind Papercuts, fills his songs with a pleasant, late-'90s slacker insouciance. And though his lyrics do strive to be optimistic, for him, as for similarly dreary songwriters Elliott Smith and Jon Brion, smiles are either casualties of the past or something for other people.

This feeling also soaks into the music, which plods somewhere between Beach House (whose Alex Scally helps out with the production) and simpler, earlier Yo La Tengo, each track slowly borne along by droning organs and unsyncopated basses. It isn't new indie-rock territory, and spring is certainly an odd time to release such a puzzling (and puzzled) record, but I couldn't stop listening to it.

PAPERCUTS + VETIVER | Harpers Ferry, 158 Brighton Ave, Allston | May 6 @ 8 pm | $14 | 617.254.9743 or www.harpersferryboston.com

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  Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Music, Pop and Rock Music,  More more >
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ARTICLES BY DEVIN KING
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  •   FATHER MURPHY | ... AND HE TOLD US TO TURN TO THE SUN  |  July 29, 2009
    Harking back to an America where one's own lonely voice was the only radio and a BBQ meant a spit in the middle of the desert, Torino's Father Murphy hide detuned industrial textures within stripped-down, spacy folk instrumentation, like a man in a black hat picking up a bullet-riddled guitar with which to serenade his captives.
  •   SOUNDCARRIERS | HARMONIUM  |  May 27, 2009
    The first album from this Nottingham-based band is California dippy: whispered female/male harmonies, slack flutes, swinging drums, comping Hammond organs, and a bass player who finds basic funk riffs in every progression.
  •   THE MOVING PICTURES  |  May 12, 2009
    If one way that bands tie themselves to the past is through sonic reference — Fleet Foxes calling forth Crosby, Stills and Nash, or Animal Collective channeling the Grateful Dead — then there's been a number of bands who tie themselves to the past through cultural reference.
  •   VARIOUS ARTISTS | OPEN STRINGS: 1920S MIDDLE EASTERN RECORDINGS  |  May 06, 2009
    Over the past year, Honest Jon's has released three compilations culled from more than 150,000 78s of early music from the EMI Hayes Archive: music from 1930s Baghdad, early West African music recorded in Britain, and a more general compilation that moved across country lines and the first half of the 20th century.
  •   PAPERCUTS | YOU CAN HAVE WHAT YOU WANT  |  April 14, 2009
    Hidden under reverb and aggressive analog production, the first sung lyrics on You Can Have What You Want belie what seems to be a cheery record title: "Once we walked in the sunlight three years ago this July."

 See all articles by: DEVIN KING

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