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Album Review

Someday This Could All Be Yours

The Paper Chase
Someday This Could All Be Yours

[Kill Rock Stars; 2009]

6.8

Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala

We've been assured the Paper Chase's Someday This Could All Be Yours is a simpler, if not necessarily kinder record from them: ten songs, no interludes, no interstitial chit-chat. But this is a band with a sense of humor so dark it can make Xiu Xiu look like Fountains of Wayne. So, sure, it's probably the Paper Chase's most typically digestible work; it's also an exploration of humankind's futile attempts to manage itself in the face of catastrophe set to erratic squall, equal parts delirium and stone-cold sobriety.

The Paper Chase's singularity is certainly something to be admired, especially when musical discussion too often boils down to "belongs in genre X"/"sounds like bands Y & Z." When you get the itch to listen to Someday, nothing else is going to suffice except for maybe other Paper Chase albums. It can also be a ceiling for your enjoyment in the event you value versatility or demand that bands should always have some sort of artistic trajectory in mind: it's been three years since Now You Are One of Us and the only musical touch-ups are what could be a harpsichord and maybe 30 seconds of acoustic guitar.

So yes, Someday still manages to be undeniably the work of the Paper Chase, a continuation of the sort of musical scrapple they've made hay on, which is to say it's completely unappetizing going only on the ingredients. The songs here are composed of nasty little things-- tingling bits of piano wire, piercing guitar squawk, flatted thirds, minor seconds. Nearly every stringed instrument gets employed for dissonance taken separately, and yet collectively they become palatable, even catchy. It's easy to give too many props to the production of John Congleton-- after all, he's done engineering work with Modest Mouse (whose whole career gets summarized in about two and a half minutes on "The Laying of Hands, the Speaking in Tongues [The Mass Hysteria]") as well as Antony and the Johnsons. Plus, his straitjacketed, strangulated vocals suggest a lifetime of sipping from Saddle Creek.

Yet like last time, there are plenty of sturdy, major-key melodies that go straight for the jugular. But whatever sing-along quality they have, their effectiveness is almost always determined by context. When Now You Are One of Us' "Wait Until I Get My Hands on You" pilfered the "Father & Son" melody, it was less a homage than an act of molestation. You get something of an overt repeat on that strategy when "The Small of Your Back, the Nape of Your Neck (The Blizzard)" explodes into "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands", but more often, Congleton smears and smudges. You'd think the forceful string coda of "If Nobody Moves, Nobody Will Get Hurt (The Extinction)" would drive home the vocal melody, but instead, at the end of each bar, it just misses the mark by a half-step or so. By the next song, Congleton is "drawing a bloodbath" and "going to heaven" with or without you in what appears to be the record's most obvious mismanagement of U2's anthemics until the most truly anthemic song on the record recalls the chorus from "Walk On". It's called "This Is a Rape (The Flood)". Welcome to the Paper Chase's world of anthems for the misshapes and misfits.

— Ian Cohen, June 24, 2009


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