Papercuts

Papercuts is the work of San Francisco resident Jason Quever, singer, guitarist, producer and performer of elegant, melancholic pop music. His third album You Can Have What You Want, due to be released next week, represents a step forward for him: more ambitious sonically and lyrically, it’s also his most cohesive and rewarding effort so far. He was kind enough to speak to us over the phone about it.

Hello, Papercuts?

Hi, Jason here.

Hi Jason! I just had a phone number for Papercuts so I didn’t know who I’d get, but I assumed you weren’t all living in the same house like the Monkees...

No (laughs), it’s pretty much my project. It’s pretty open, people come and go, but I mostly try to keep the same people in place, as much as possible. I’m pretty happy with the line-up now.

Can you tell us a little about what were you trying to do with this album?

Mainly this album was about wanting to go somewhere I hadn’t been before, using new tones and textures. The lyrics are a bit more personal, I guess. I wanted to give the listener more credit, to try to get away from doing something "universal" and not make songs that people could get straight away, even though people often didn’t actually get the earlier ones…I guess that’s just me, I can’t seem to do that. There’s a sci-fi thing going on, and the instrumentation is different to before, it’s more geared towards playing live. I guess mostly I wanted to challenge myself to try new things, and to do something a bit more original.

I read you recorded the new album in analog, is that true?

Yeah, but I’m open to other things, I think people think that... I’m not a fetishist or anything! I probably shouldn’t have put that in the bio... I just have a studio in my house, and I’ve been recording there for years, and it’s just easier for me. I find that there’s a lot of fiddling about with computers when you’re recording digitally, a lot of the time little things have to be fixed and corrected. With analog, it’s all there in front of you, there’s no mystery to it, and if there’s a problem then you just have to roll the tape back and start again... which often turns out to be quicker in the long run anyway (laughs).

What are you listening to at the moment?

At the moment I’m listening to a lot of El Perro Del Mar, I really like that. I got into Kate Bush, that was kind of a new thing. I didn’t get it at first, didn’t realise how amazing it was. She’s so original, she doesn’t have traditional song structures, really...

It’s funny, I interviewed Beach House last year and they mentioned they were listening to Kate Bush...

Yeah we toured with them, and I got them into Kate Bush!

Nice one.

Yeah, I played Alex (Scally, who guests on You Can Have What You Want) a few songs and he became ridiculously obsessed to the point where I didn’t want to hear her any more for a while.

You’ve toured with them and also with Grizzly Bear – has that affected the way you work at all?

Yeah, I think both of those bands happen to be really good at taking what they do and doing it live. I had a pretty relaxed approach, playing with a few of my friends and whoever was around, and I’ve never been too obsessed with performing live and making it sound like the album, so I think that more than anything influenced me. Grizzly Bear sound different live but they sound amazing, so that was really hard cause it was my first tour when I went out with them, I was ramshackle and just, you know, cranking it up and hoping it sounded good. Their sound is just so perfectly thought out, so that really changed me, I realised that it could be really fun to try and do what I do in the studio live – before, I always thought it would be too stressful to even try.

That was probably the start of wanting to make a new record that would be a little more attainable in terms of live performance, mainly using organ and electric guitar. Beach House are the same, Alex would be like, “you have to use the same keyboard you recorded with, that’s how you get that sound”. He’s a meticulously detail-oriented person as an arranger, and he was really adamant that if you play a song from a record it should have the same tones, and I totally agree with that and I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that myself.

Ok, thanks for your time Jason! Hope you make it to Ireland some time soon.

Yeah, I hope so too.

You Can Have What You Want is released on Memphis Industries on April 13th.

Papercuts will be playing various dates around the UK (but not Ireland, alas) from the 9th April. See www.myspace.com/thepapercuts for tour details.