It's been three years since the last Papercuts album. That one, the superb Parallel Universe Blues, found Jason Quever doing some of the best shoegaze-ish stuff I'd heard in ages. The new Papercuts EP, Baxter's Bliss, is similar but more expansive in sound.
"A Dull Boy" glides by on a wave of bliss, while a smart cover of "When Will You Come Home" by Galaxie 500 updates the classic by taking it into another direction. This is a good deal faster than you'd expect it to be, knowing the original, but it works, and what's here on this tune and others recalls early Sebadoh, oddly. A lovely cover of "The Partisan" by Leonard Cohen is nearly as good, ditching Quever's usual methodology for something nearly straight folk rock. Baxter's Bliss stirs up the Papercuts sound enough that it makes me very intrigued about what will come next from Jason Quever on a subsequent full-length release.
Baxter's Bliss is out on Friday and more details can be had via the official Papercuts website.
[Photo: Amy Marco]