The Paper Chase - Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol. 1

I'm a big fan of The Paper Chase - in the 11 years I've been listening to them I'm yet to find a band that sounds remotely like them or has excited me in the same way, which is both awesome and a shame. They've since called it a day and the main driving force behind the band, John Congleton, appears to be focusing on his pretty successful career as a producer. It's sad, but they released a lot of good music along the way so I can't complain too much.

I've always planned to complete my Paper Chase collection but once I had everything on at least one format I kinda stopped. It wouldn't be a tricky one to complete I think but I've simply not put in the effort. When I saw this copy of their final album in Music and Video Exchange in Soho I was torn; I knew I wanted to buy a vinyl copy at some point, but did I want this slightly dog-eared copy? I'm certain there are copies in way better condition that I could have bought for a broadly similar price, but it also pained me to see this copy sat in the racks gradually getting more and more battered. I knew I had to buy it really, but part of me will always me slightly annoyed at the tatty sleeve. I'd like to call it "well-loved" but ultimately I know it's more to do with the effect of endless Londoners flicking past it.

Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol 1 will always be an odd record in The Paper Chase's work - the volume one that never had a volume two. I remember when it came out someone pointed that a curious thing happened on the album that doesn't really happened on any other Paper Chase album - one song finishes and there's a gap before the next one starts. What counts as normal on any other record makes for the strangest thing on a Paper Chase record. Unlike the previous albums, Someday... feels like 10 songs while the others were continuous pieces of music. That's not a bad thing, but I think the theme that holds the album together becomes less apparent because of it.

All of The Paper Chase's albums are great (in my opinion) but over the years I've found myself turning to God Bless Your Black Heart and Hide the Kitchen Knives the most, but that's not to say the other albums aren't excellent too. Someday... holds up well amongst the back-catalogue and has it's fair share of excellent songs - Your Money or Your Life (The Comet), What Should We Do With Your Body (The Lightning) and This is a Rape (The Flood) make for a particularly excellent trio.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £8 second hand
Bought: Music and Video Exchange, London
When: 23/05/14
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "We're all aboard the Titanic" Side B: "We're all aboard the Titanic"
mp3s: no

The Paper Chase - Cntrl-Alt-Delete-U

I've raved about The Paper Chase a lot on here already, and you can read about their other records here. There's something about their very unique style that I absolutely adore, but one of the many other things I enjoy is how they made each record feel like a whole, rather than a collection of songs. This EP certainly has that feeling, even though the themes are maybe less obvious than their other albums.

Cntrl-Alt-Delete-U only has five songs (and an amazing title) but they're all great, and there's no messing around. The songs feel fuller and more crazed than the ones on the band's other records, but maybe that's a result of the fact it's an EP - they had to squeeze all the ideas in. There's barely room for anything else in This is the Return of the Don't Talk Backs. I like it a lot, but The Paper Chase have long been one of my favourite bands so I was probably always going to. About halfway through Who Can Deny How Delicious it Tastes? these haunting string appear and fade in and out throughout the rest of the second half, which finishes with the epic ...The Unopened Email to God, possibly one of my favourite Paper Chase songs. The strings reappear even more prominently and carry the lengthy second half of the song whilst John rants about the sun. If all this wasn't good enough, the record ends with a man's voice explaining his hatred for the sun finally finding a locked groove in the vinyl with the line "I hate the sun" on repeat for infinity. I have a few records that end with locked grooves, but this is by far the finest (not to mention the difficultly of pressing the record so the last groove was exactly long enough; I have no idea how you go about planning such a thing).

Aside from a few albums I only have on cd, this completes the Paper Chase back-catalogue for me. When I've got a bit more money floating around I plan to see if I can pick up the missing vinyl because it'll be lovely to have the complete collection of one of my favourite bands.

Format: 12"

Tracks: 5

Cost: Gift, new

Bought: Gift

When: 25/12/05

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

The Paper Chase + Xiu Xiu - Cover Nick Cave

With the exception of the very last album The Paper Chase put out, this was the last thing missing from my collection. My parents had bought me the LP of God Bless Your Black Heart one Christmas but my mum began to panic it might not arrive in time. She emailed the band to check on it's progress from their website, and they very kindly sent me a copy of the new split with Xiu Xiu to make up for it potentially being late. Luckily the LP arrived in good time and this one turned up just after Christmas. (However, just after Christmas I returned to Australia for my second semester out there, so didn't actually get to play the record until I returned in the summer.)

I often meant to make more of an effort to get into Nick Cave's music, but somehow it's still not happened, so I still don't know either of the original versions of these songs. On top on that, Xiu Xiu were a band I could never convince myself entirely about. I've heard a few songs that I've quite enjoyed (Clowne Towne is one), but also some others that I could barely listen to. Both of the covers here are nice enough, and the bands certainly put their own spin on each, but it's not made me run out and buy Nick Cave or Xiu Xiu records.


Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: Gift, new
Bought: Gift
When: 26/06/06
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Paper Chase - ...And the Machines Are Winning

At some point, I'm not exactly sure when, I decided a potentially achievable task would be to try and find everything The Paper Chase had put out. I'd been collecting records by the Manics for years and was starting to get bored - there were way too many and it would never be complete (at best, I think I had a version of every song they'd put out on at least one format). The Paper Chase however had potential - I couldn't get enough of their music and they hadn't released all that much. In fact, the only really difficult records were this one and a split cd with e-Class and Lugsole (unless there are more that I'm unaware of!).

Anyway, whilst I was living in Australia I found some guy on eBay selling this copy of ...And the Machines Are Winning and jumped at the chance to get it, despite £10 being an awful lot of money to a student on a year abroad. I won the bid and a short while later it was mine. I can't imagine there are too many people with Paper Chase collections, but I suspect this is missing from most, which is a shame because it's incredible. (A few weeks later I noticed the same guy was also selling the split cd so I picked that up too).

Musically, it's as fantastically jarring and awkward as anything else they'd go on to make. Both sides are kept going by the drums, and build up using increasingly strained vocals, jagged guitars and pianos. To this day I have no idea if What I'd Like to Do to You Now and At the Moment When the Gear Slips are two songs or just one (I also wonder if the label is printed the wrong way around), but the screams of "I need control" are perfect. Both (all three?) of these songs are great examples of why I love this band so much.


Format: 7", gatefold
Tracks: 2
Cost: £10.50 second hand
Bought: eBay
When: 11/10/05
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Paper Chase + Will Johnson - Split

This is a record I picked up about a year after I first heard The Paper Chase (a story you can read all about here). I was putting in a large order with Interpunk (the more you buy, the cheaper the postage!) and saw this one on there. "Punk" wouldn't be the first genre I'd put either artist into, but it's a flexible term, not to mention I think Interpunk works a bit like an uber-distro. Anyway, I was keen to hear more by The Paper Chase, so added it to the basket.

A split in what I consider to be the classic sense, both cover a song by the other. I'd never heard of Will Johnson at the time, nor heard The Riot Jack, but enjoyed it anyway. It was certainly less dark than what I'd come to expect from John Congleton and co, and more sparse, relying mostly on a drum beat, strings and John's strained vocals. A good listen, and not just collection-fodder.

On the b-side however, was a song I knew - I Did a Terrible Thing - the opener to The Paper Chase's second album Hide the Kitchen Knives. Will's take on this is to make it into a lovely, lengthy, almost country song. With a harmonica taking over from the strings on the album version, you hardly even notice the rather twisted theme of the lyrics. This turned out to be the highlight of the record for me. After hearing it, I did some research, picked up a couple of Centro-Matic's albums, and became a fan. In November I finally get to see him live, which I'm looking forward to greatly (in The Union Chapel, no less - one of my favourite venues). Some time ago, he was due to play with Jason Molina in my teenage-haunt The Railway, but the show got cancelled and Jason Molina sadly disappeared into rehab for a few years.

Anyway, it just dawned on me that after all these years, I've still not heard the original of The Riot Jack. I tried to find it at the time, but the internet was a very different place in 2004. However, modern technology prevails and in another tab I have open Centro-Matic's soundcloud page with Will's 2002 original. It's almost strange hearing it after so many years of only knowing The Paper Chase's version. Listening to it now, it's similarly sparse, but haunting and sweet, and completely different to The Paper Chase's take on it.

So, all in all, a great record both musically, and for where it led me.


Format: 7",
Tracks: 2
Cost: £5.56 new
Bought: Interpunk
When: 06/11/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Paper Chase - God Bless Your Black Heart

This is the first record by The Paper Chase I've written about on here, so it seems like an appropriate time to rant and rave about how much I fucking love The Paper Chase. It's a tale of finding one of your favourite bands of all time by complete accident.

I can't remember the day of the week right now, but it was the day Hugh and I were finally going to see Glassjaw. It was the summer between college and university and I'd gone into town during the day to check out the sale MVC had on. They had loads of cds for £3 or £4, but mostly of stock they couldn't sell rather than the brought-in stock HMV has in theirs. Having spent many hours in the years before this staring at cds I couldn't afford in that shop, it was great to be able to buy them for so cheap. Whilst flicking through I saw two cds that I'd never seen on the shelves before (I suspect someone may have ordered them in but never bought them). They were the first two albums by The Paper Chase. The first, Young Bodies..., had a label explaining a little about the band, which was particularly helpful given that I'd never heard of them before. It made them sound very exciting and compared them to The Birthday Party and Les Savy Fav. I knew a song by The Birthday Party but had never heard of Les Savy Fav (The Paper Chase's influence over my musical knowledge had already begun it seems). I bought Young Bodies along with a small stack of other cds and headed home. (As I was leaving the shop Hugh phoned to say that Glassjaw was cancelled once again - a common theme at the time - but our friend Steve was having a party that night, so it wasn't a complete loss.)

Anyway, intrigue lead me to play The Paper Chase first when I got home and I loved it. It was dark and awkward and noisy and discordant; all things I had no idea I enjoyed so much. It was also beautiful at the same time. The rhythm section and the piano with a sparsely used guitar on top made for some incredible songs. And John Congleton's vocals fitted perfectly, as did the twisted lyrics he sang about. I was a fan from the offset. I bought all their albums (almost literally, with the exception of a few records of albums I only have on cd, I have it all) and saw them as many times as possible during their existence (a brilliant experience indeed).

But this is about God Bless Your Black Heart, which I'm often tempted to say if my favourite album (although there's not a bad one in the bunch). Said the Spider to the Fly is perfect as a song and as an opener to the album. It's my go-to Paper Chase song when I put them on a mixtape and a great example of their music. I can't quite find the way to describe why I think that song is so great, but feel free to listen for yourselves and see. There are too many other great songs (with long titles) to list the other classics, but Let's Be Bad Henry and Dying With Decent Music both deserve a special mention. Like all but the last album, there are practically no gaps between the songs and a few filler bits between the songs, but when played as a whole album they hold it together brilliantly. I never considered their records to be "concept albums" as such, but they all have themes and I enjoy the regular appearance of the words "Come to me" here. As a bonus to the vinyl version, we get a stripped-back, acoustic rendition of Said the Spider added to the end.

As mentioned earlier, this band got me into so many others. I'd never heard of Les Savy Fav and became a fan of them. I saw The Paper Chase were touring with Explosions in the Sky and became a fan of them too. Even more significantly, when I saw The Paper Chase were playing Explosions in the Sky's All Tomorrow's Parties festival I went and became a fan of all things ATP. Now, anyone who knows the incredible festivals and gigs ATP put on will know that this lead me to unknown quantities of incredible music.

Sure, I may have heard of these bands and events at some later date and there were certainly other factors at play, but in my mind, if I hadn't found that Paper Chase cd in my local (chain) record shop that summer's day I may never have discovered The Paper Chase nor all this fantastic music I listen to now. I always liked the bit in Garden State when Natalie Portman gives Scrubs-guy the headphones, says "this song will change your life" and plays him The Shins. Finding a cd in a record shop is far less Hollywood, but as far as I'm concerned, getting into this band was life-changing for me.


Format: Double 12", gatefold
Tracks: 15
Cost: Gift
Bought: Gift
When: 25/12/05
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no