Label: Kill Rock Stars
Producer: John Congleton
Release Year: 2006
Listen: Spotify / Apple Music
Stuck somewhere between that Halloween record you had as a kid with the spooky sounds on it and a musical representation of the movie The Others, The Paper Chase uses off-kilter strings and piano along with the bombast of slap bass and kick drums to drive home a theatrical house of horrors. The lyrics weave their way through illness and death and ghosts and general ugliness (as if you couldn’t guess by the guy hanging from a noose on the album cover). The screech-sung lyrics are coated in reverb, but are front and center in the bashing tidal wave of chopped guitar bursts, backing screaming and the occasional snippet of dialogue from somewhere. The overall effect is a swirling crazy mess of catchy rock that will drive most insane, but will totally make ’em listen all the way there.
