Papercuts
You Can Have What You Want
Memphis Industries
By Eileen Tilson
As a friend and I were listening to the Papercuts’ latest album, You
Can Have What You Want, the aforementioned friend commented
that it's “like a Beach Boys video; it’s supposed to be cheerful, but leaves
you feeling kind of melancholy.” The fact that Papercuts are creating their niche
in San Francisco coincides nicely with this trippy Haight-Ashbury
album.
While there are some tunes on the album, such as
“Jet Plane,” that show remnants of Mazzy Star days, each song on Jason Quever’s
one man band seems to open slowly like watching a flower sprout, and then
drudges along with droning organs and muffed voices. The album’s opening lines
“"Once we walked in the sunlight three
years ago this July," set the tone for the entire album, as if Quever has spent
the past three years staring into space or watching the clouds roll by while
contemplating his own mortality. What is left is a collection of dreamy songs
that would be appropriate for the love scenes in Napoleon Dynamite.
Overall the album is summery and beautifully dense, but it lacks the dynamics
to bring its listeners into any sort of transcendence into the fifth
dimension.
But then again, this hammock-nap, hedonist pop, is
what Papercuts’ fans love about the band. As the “Future Primitive” video
suggests, Papercuts’ is music for those lone souls who are going on journeys
across post-apocalyptic lands … or just fell asleep in the sun for too
long.
