Hasta La Ideas

The third album for Papercuts, You Can Have What You Want, highlights a strongly maturing Jason Robert Quever, who’s still a nostalgic songwriter but is bringing a new level of mastery to his trademark sound in good form. Looking back to the first impression of the SF band in 2004, the lo-fi aesthetic of Mockingbird was a hazy and modern take on the old. A “vintage” concept in many respects, it expressed a sort of devoted appreciation for the faded era in music that rang loud throughout the mid-sixties.

Recalling the Zombies and perhaps some stony aftermath of love gone wrong, Papercuts’ sound is all adrift in dreamland from start to end. With some heavy base lines and raspy drums—not to mention those chiming organ pipes—the music seems just right, in all the wrong ways, for that recent heartache.