As a shaggy-haired teenage beanpole, I eventually graduated from worshipping inept hardcore debutantes and CBGB's amateur-night punks to indulging my melancholic needs with the more "refined" strains of The Smiths, Joy Division, The Cure, et al. At the time, the solipsistic zeitgeist wallowed in overdramatic giddiness like running down a street in the rain, feeling misunderstood, shaking my head no-no-no to "Boys Don't Cry", and milking a sense of the sublime (even if ill-defined) within my own gut-wrenching awkwardness. I was a cross between a 16-year-old Thurston Moore and a member of A Flock of Seagulls.
That was a decade ago, but despite limited contact with the youngsters, I assume the I-wear-black-on-the-outside initiation period rings true for a new breed of suburbanites armed with Thursday, Dashboard Confessional, and Suicide Girls. And Lord knows If I had a time machine, The pAper chAse would've been plenty of fuel for my crocodile tears: So yeah, hand me a hanky because hearts really do turn weird colors and no, she doesn't owe you a goddamn thing...
Despite epic production (think Sunny Day Real Estate aiming for Wagner), novelistic twists, and admirable chutzpah on God Bless Your Black Heart, The pAper chAse's lavishly curated third full-length, it's difficult to take every last pity party sentiment seriously. Still, John Congleton's breakdown is less grating than the detritus of most emo and post-emo yowlers, and his dual roll as main songwriter and atmospheric engineer (he's also turned knobs for 90 Day Men and Explosions in the Sky, among others), offers him the micro-managing ability to one-up the average screamer by setting his carefully narrated denouement in what feels like a diorama that houses Nick Cave's book And the Ass Saw the Angel as narrated by some imaginary post-punk version of the bald guy from President's of the United States of America vomiting gothic-lite bile onto a dark oak table.
Tangentially somewhere between Dismemberment Plan geek and Cursive angst, there's a circus parade of violent outbursts, murky characters named "queen bee" and "buttercup," white slaves, a pair of sideburns that reek of sex, and even some goddamn fat babies. At the end of Congleton's imagistic lyrical marathon, it's up to the listener to piece together the narrative and figure out, really, what he's talking about.
Congleton layers his revenge fantasies atop aggressive shouting, dingy strings, cabaret piano, "broken heart" samples, and mathy guitar interjections-- all to create a dense, herky-jerky post-post-post not unlike Coral's Pillow Talk or the aforementioned Cursive's hyper-divorce jam Domestica. But where Domestica at times felt like legitimate hurt, The pAper chAse have a problem wading beyond bleating theatrics. And where Cursive's vocalist, Tim Kasher, proves adept at varying his accusatory attack, Congleton projects a disregard for variation, rarely coming down from his high-end hysterical cowpoke snarl. Opting for song titles that match his over-the-top sermonizing ("Abby, You're Going to Burn for What You've Done to Me", "One Day He Went Out for Milk and Never Came Home", "Now, We Just Slowly Circle the Draining Fishbowl"), stations him at full throttle, even when the music's a mere whisper.
There's not a thing wrong with fire and brimstone dashed with piss and vinegar, but before the album reaches its halfway point, Congleton's shouty boy/girl accusations have sunken into a sing-song pattern that beckons sleep like the gentle nudge of an air-conditioner's hum. When presenting words and emotions this "extreme," it often helps to house it in a more stoic structure-- say the less trill slashing of Swans. In this sense, the strongest portions of God Bless Your Black Heart are those closest to monotonous silence: jingle bells, the aftershock of a sinewy guitar, pleasing percussion/piano build-ups, noir interludes, hollowed parlor ambiance, the creaky violin outro of "The Sinking Ship, The Grand Applause", and the gaps in "A War Is Coming", a near-industrial snippet. Bassist Bobby Weaver and drummer Aryn Dalton provide an especially powerful rhythm section-- think a Shellac ballet. Sean Kirkpatrick contributes well-timed piano and synth lines that fill out the sound admirably (at one point I swear I can feel the haze of a neo-Gregorian chant), and Congleton's cathartic guitar parts wrap around his high-end decibels like a Columbian necktie.
Ultimately, God Bless Your Black Heart's seemingly endless feast of rants and threats (i.e. "I'll see your head up on a pole," "Your doctors and lawyers can't save your ass," etc.) would imply that for Congleton to issue a restraining order against his bad self might not be a bad idea. Sometimes erstwhile obsessiveness can lead to revelation, but beyond the fancy engineering, I don't see much of that here.
I'm not suggesting that The pAper chAse opt for dull-as-dirt Don Caballero instrumentals when it's obvious the band's ability to make-or-break rests on Congleton's shoulders and overwrought mind, but God Bless Your Black Heart really would benefit from a muted falsetto here or a tiny mumble there. You get a sense of that spaciousness over the album's last three tracks and it's completely beautiful: If the ballast leveled out more regularly and allowed breathing room for the nonverbal, these multi-layered atmospheres would ineluctably stand up and speak for themselves with less insistent wheezing. If I weren't so broke, I might even chip in for the guy's therapy to see it happen.
