The Papercuts
Schubas Tavern in Chicago
8/29/07
After waiting for months, I was finally able to see The Papercuts, the three piece San Francisco band stopping by Schubas at the end of their tour. I knew it would be the kind of show I’d hear but also feel. I knew I’d have a hard time even standing upright at times while the hazy sound coming from what could have been Bob Dylan’s children hit me. The first two songs struck me off guard as they were from a previous album, Mockingbird which I hadn’t yet heard. Before they even started playing their lovely notes, they asked for the lights to be turned down as low as possible. And I felt myself waiting in despair with two songs as strangers keeping me company while I looked up from the darkness. And then, they played “John Brown,” third song into their setlist, with possibly the best bridge in a song since Frank Black’s Speedy Marie.. That is how The Papercuts broke my heart.
If life was just a cassette tape, you could easily rewind back to your own special moments of experience and play them again. Such is what I might do for the day I was driving to work and “Dear Employee,” the opening track and one of their best from Can’t Go Back, came over the wluw radiowaves. Immediately I had to pull over just to catch my breath because the steering wheel wasn’t giving me enough support. That hadn’t happened since the Tom Waits song Alice played and before that when I heard Yo La Tengo’s Tears are in Your Eyes. The Papercuts were a band I immediately took a liking to and, in a helpless manner, though I found out about their show some time in advance, I had to wait all summer long.
That said, live they were definitely on but had very little interaction with the audience during their short set after which they reported would not be followed by any encores (I had the distinct impression the band doesn’t usually do them.) Lead singer Jason Robert Quever and who I guess was Kelly Nyland (their myspace site doesn’t make it incredibly clear) almost seemed mousy. Jason varied between guitar and keyboards while Kelly stuck to drums but the music took over as a stage presence. Truly, the only person who looked like he was a rock star was bassist Trevor Montgomery (again, I presume from their myspace info.) who was tattoo laden to the point where I immediately thought of Flannery O’Connor’s Parker’s Back, though no doubt his were gotten under different circumstances. Either way, he was completely stoic in a way that made it difficult to look away. And though I fretted over the low lights, the music made up for it with all it’s jangles and echoes of what music should have. Besides, how can you not like a band that puts Abraham Lincoln on their t-shirts?
setlist:
