the paper chase

A lot of bad bands (AFI, Hed(pe), Freshkill) and and potentially bad movies (Omen) are using the fact that next Tuesday is 6/6/6 as a marketing tool. It's fitting, then, that one of the most anti-commerical bands out there, The Paper Chase (think Fugazi-style cred) is releasing it's fourth full length album, Now You Are One Of Us this Tuesday, as it has a far better case for a 6/6/6 marketing campaign than any of those bands and deserves far more to be heard by as many people as possible than those bands. The Paper Chase should frighten anyone more than the cheesy emo-ism of a band like AFI, yet, due to their stuanch anti-consumerism, most people will never realize how very fitting it is that this excellent band is releasing an album on 6/6/6.

This post serves both to let you know that not only do they have an album coming out Tuesday, but that they will be playing at the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center on Friday, June 16, 2006, and it fits nicely into my series of posts about Dallas bands that I followed in the 90's (I realize I'm stretching that one a little, as their first album came out in 2000, but I first saw them live in '98).

The Paper Chase's paranoid and schizophrenic marriage of noise, jazz, punk, and indie music is often suffocating and disconcerting but has the ability to wring a melody out of even the most jagged guitars lines and pounding rhythms. Their sample heavy albums are best listened to from beginning to end, as tiring as that may be. The band is monsterous live, with singer and guitarist John Congleton's guitar flying around his body, dancing with his flailing arms and physically mimicing the frantic sounds he is pulling from it. Here are a couple songs to whet your appetitie. Be sure to pick up the new album on Tuesday.

the paper chase - I'm Gonna Spend the Rest of My Life Lying
the paper chase - Now You're Gonna Get It
the paper chase - Said the Spider to the Fly

Obscure Sound also has three tracks from the new album.