***"Hello, friend. I hope all is well with you. I am writing to let you know that my new album, Reunion, is now available in a limited vinyl edition on the ever/never label. After working with a backing band for the last two records, I decided to return to writing and recording alone in the studio, the way I made A Sudden Shift ten years ago, and the way I did for nearly 20 years before that. I started tracking for Reunion at the tail end of 2019 with my engineer, Gregg, at a beautifully appointed studio in Connecticut. That proved a slow and expensive process, and of course it ground to a halt when the pandemic struck in March 2020. I thought I’d make the best of it, start over and try fleshing out the songs at home on the Mac, so that when the world opened up again I would have a detailed blueprint for the album, and I could go back to the studio and track all of it quickly and methodically. Instead, I wound up making the entire record at home. Gregg’s mix and mastering job made these homemade tracks go bang, and thanks to his finesse, it is the best-sounding record I’ve made so far. Last night when we listened to the test pressing of the album at e/n’s offices, a friend remarked that 'Anita, Sing' is an adult contemporary track. I winced, reflexively, but of course, she was right: the song is based on...
LP $26.95
03/04/2022
***When we last checked in with urban troubadour Richard Papiercuts, he was leading his band through the ambitious pop of IF, his debut for Ever/Never. A major statement from an unknown artist, IF was ripping with drama and daring listeners into a twilight world rife with lust, life, and the many contradictions contained within such four-letter words. Now three years wiser, Papiercuts has shed some of the mystery to confront the camera dead-on. Twisting the Night is a glossier production, timeless while conjuring the flickering pop-surrealism of ‘80s music videos and the grandiose maximalism of Peter Gabriel, INXS, and Tears for Fears, but on a 20 hour studio time limit. Over the course of TTN's four songs, Papiercuts and his crack band sculpt stately tableaus that hew toward the dark side of pop while avoiding cliches and sentimentality. 'There’s no correction, no distortion / in the way your voice cuts through the air': So begin the lyrics to opening cut 'A Place to Stay,' which serves as a re-introduction to Papiercuts’s soundworld, this time around avoiding obfuscation and willing to meet the listener halfway. 'Starless Summer Night,' an epic, seven-minute centerpiece, is described by Papiercuts as a 'lucid nightmare' in the tradition of the Elevators and Tom Verlaine, but where apocalyptic dread mingles with the everyday anxieties of fatherhood. This is big pop music for big hearts and minds. But the hit on Twisting the Night is 'The Riddle,' a shimmering anthem that whorls about like a mirage, seducing the...
12" $17.75
01/04/2018