2000SICK Write-Up #01::: The Paper Chase
“What’s so amazing about grace?” The Paper Chase
THE PAPER CHASE‘s “You’re One Of Them Aren’t You” is the opener of my 2000SICKMIX.
The Paper Chase have been one of my favourite bands ever since I’ve first seen them at the K4 live in January 2003, back then touring with their early masterpiece Hide The Kitchen Knives. The follow-up album was solid but didn’t really go beyond the Kitchen Knives. I was prepared not to expect too much from the next one but – boom! – I instantly fell for last year’s Now You Are One Of Us album. I even remember when I unwrapped it (got the package from the mailorder on a morning in April last year and listened to it while having breakfast with – if I’m not totally mistaken – the Yellow Press guys who stayed at my place after their show).
With the pissed-off-ness, desperateness and smartness of Congleton’s vocals and lyrics they have one of the most punk voices in today’s music and if you know me you know that here I’m not talking about some comfortable retro-fake-anger of punk as a genre or, erm… ‘movement’ but about music that comes with a certain intensity and makes you feel a special urge it was made with. The inevitability of a song. Not many bands have that. With The Paper Chase this inevitability can be heard and felt in every pore and every tiny muscle of their music.
To exert genre terms (which honestly I find harder from year to year, although terms like ‘grindie’ still manage to make me smile) I’d say The Paper Chase drift between noise rock and art punk (I remember when I first heard their ‘Kitchen Knives’ album my first musical association was Chokebore’s great ‘Anything Near Water’ album). ‘Drift’ though, is a vocabulary that definitely doesn’t fit the Paper Chase cosmos: Every ever so tiny detail, a derailing melody, a cello line, a sample, no matter how awkward it sounds, seems to sit exactly where it should. No drifting here, Sir, this music might have its experimental moments but it is no ‘free’ music. It is music with an author sitting tightly in your neck but I have to say if I find myself in that music then, hey, fuck Barthes: this still can be a very good feeling, even in 2006. Or 7.
“… with hope for the hopeless and help for the helplessly hopeful life is long when you’re lonely or the ugly the unclean the unfit will fuck the unhappy
you’re going down good friend so i’m letting go of your leg”
The Paper Chase
I can’t wait to see them live again, and there will be a Europe tour in 2007, though sadly they won’t play at the K4 this time but at least at the two next best places 😉 : Nearest shows on the Germany part of their tour in April are – and you’ll definitely find me at both of those – at Würzburg’s Cafe Cairo (XYEAHX) and Munich’s Kafe Kult. Be sure not to miss them. By now I’ve seen them three times, two times we had them playing at the K4 and once I watched them in Munich and I wouldn’t want to miss a moment of each show.
For pictures of the 2003 (K4 nbg) and the 2005 (Kafe Kult mun) shows please go to www.eartrumpet.net, the website of my dear friend Tobi who drowned me in PHP tutorials last week and as soon as I have worked my way through those you might find pictures of the 2004 show (like those above) at the K4 with Challenger and The National back again on my little website that to my great deepest regret is still non-functional. (Aren’t there any website designers out there who are eager to do hi-quality work for non-profit?)
Back on topic: Here’s the PAPER CHASE myspace profile.
Please, go buy PAPER CHASE music for example from *yes, there’s a world beyond amazon* NOVA Mailorder.
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Recommended reading: K-PUNK blog about Saddam’s execution:
“It begins with Shock and Awe and ends in Snuff…”
On a funnier yet strangely related (last week ‘Iphone’ replaced ‘Saddam’ as most used search term on Technorati) note: Here’s a link to a worth1000.com photoshopping contest about fake new Apple products, look at them here.
I hope they and the writer of this nice fake IPhone user guide don’t get sued. Apple has lost another piece of respect when they threatened to sue bloggers for reporting about a software that faked the Iphone screen icons for other mobiles. It’s one thing to sue the hackers who made the software but please: threaten the people who only report on it?