Papercuts – You Can Have What You Want (Gnomonsong) reviewed by Robert Ham
Papercuts
On his third album using the name Papercuts, Jason Quever continues his strange and beautiful love affair with the music of the 1960s. This time around, though, his songs feel covered over with gauze or a thick patina of reverb and the reedy sound of the Farfisa.
It seems to be a deliberate move, in aid of the content of the album. Quever’s lyrics have always had a rather dreamy quality, but here he sounds like he’s tapped directly into his unconscious visions. On a pair of tracks, he envisions a life away from the planet Earth where “we’re light years from our home and we’re never going back there again” (from “Once We Walked In The Sunlight”). Elsewhere, on “The Dictator’s Lament”, he takes the guise of a world leader (or God if you care to read into it that deeply), bemoaning the fact that none of his followers are worthy to take his place.
Although his visions tend toward the melancholic, Quever and collaborator Alex Scally (Beach House) never let the music follow suit. Tracks may come across as slow and moody but they could hardly be called sad. Instead, the music counterbalances these fevered fantasies with sickly sweet singing, chiming guitar runs and poised, almost stately rhythms.
The mixture sometimes leans tracks like “The Wolf” and “The Machine Will Tell Us So” towards the world of the shoegazer, but they never coagulate and clot as many of those groups often did. It’s murky stuff, sure, but you can still see the sun shining through the haze.
Papercuts – You Can Have What You Want
Papercuts – Future Primitive [Ruby Suns Remix]
