admin
22 December 2023
Originally, I was going to spend most of this review ranting about how lead singer John Congleton\'s vocals made me want to kill kittens. I had thought up oodles of evil-minded things to write about his voice sounding like \"toddlers chewing glass\" or a \"wombat in a woodchipper\". But, by my umpteenth listen to the pAper chAse\'s fourth LP, God Bless Your Black Heart (Kill Rock Stars), I really didn\'t hate John\'s voice anymore. As a matter of fact, I actually started to like it. While they still grate on my eardrums like razor wire on a fence-hopping convict\'s palms, John\'s vocals are terribly appropriate for these songs.
Lyrically and musically, this record is bubbling over with bitterness. From its most quiet moments, to its loudest, ...Black Heart is rich with well-planned menace. It romps like a drunken clown, stumbling forward with a broken harmonium/big top lilt. The songs are hammered, like iron in a forge, smashed into shape with a Pinkerton-era Weezer sound. The guitar licks screech and swerve like a Mustang in a Steve McQueen car chase, and it\'s all reigned in by these classically haunting, dirge-like piano arrangements and off-kilter voice and sound samples. Even the album art carries on the dark mood. It features photographs of people without heads involved in mundane, everyday situations, and not-so-comforting phrases like, \"come to me\" and \"you die laughing\".
Congleton\'s unbridled yelps only help fuel the fires of spite and ill will that are so prevalent on this album. Whether you call it emo or indie rock, there\'s something about the way the individual elements of this 14-track death letter come together that makes it float above the typical, and come off as something interesting and somewhat memorable.
Lyrically and musically, this record is bubbling over with bitterness. From its most quiet moments, to its loudest, ...Black Heart is rich with well-planned menace. It romps like a drunken clown, stumbling forward with a broken harmonium/big top lilt. The songs are hammered, like iron in a forge, smashed into shape with a Pinkerton-era Weezer sound. The guitar licks screech and swerve like a Mustang in a Steve McQueen car chase, and it\'s all reigned in by these classically haunting, dirge-like piano arrangements and off-kilter voice and sound samples. Even the album art carries on the dark mood. It features photographs of people without heads involved in mundane, everyday situations, and not-so-comforting phrases like, \"come to me\" and \"you die laughing\".
Congleton\'s unbridled yelps only help fuel the fires of spite and ill will that are so prevalent on this album. Whether you call it emo or indie rock, there\'s something about the way the individual elements of this 14-track death letter come together that makes it float above the typical, and come off as something interesting and somewhat memorable.
artid
2568
Old Image
6_12_paperchase.jpg
issue
vol 6 - issue 12 (aug 2004)
section
entertainmental