San-Fransisco-based solo artist Jason Quever’s third full length release under the PAPERCUTS guise offers listeners the benefits of his exploratory venture into what’s perhaps best described a self-styled folk-driven twilight zone.
Created following a stint drumming for BEACH HOUSE on their 2008 tour, ‘You Can Have What You Want’ combines elements of psychedelia with misty-eyed sentimentality for aesthetically pleasing results.
From the melancholic hurdy-gurdy of ‘Once We Walked In The Sunlight’, with its strange melodic missing link, to the minimal charms of finale ‘The Wolf’, this is a low-key, high-angst surf through some implausibly strange and dark corridors.
‘A Dictator’s Lament’ takes shape in 4/4 time with a truly Californian 6T’s feel, with the organ prominent and the deafening thud of a stunted bassline helping the repetitive hookline along. Meanwhile, Quever’s falsetto is drenched with reverb FX to further deepen the mix.
Spector-al and snare-laden, the slowly-drowning ‘Dead Love’ is almost ethereal, posing questions with answers that are washed away by the rising tide. Elsewhere, the sinister bass/percussion combination cements the oxymoronic string-enhanced ‘Future Primitive’ as one of the record’s shadowy highlights.
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The trancelike title-track is another high point. Understated yet insistent, it draws you in from it’s thousand-yard stare vantage point to share in the widest of visions.
Following on, some intermittent brush-on-snare percussion anchors another tormenting apparition of a tune in ‘The Void’.
No instant fixes here, Quever asks for the full shift in the listener’s attention span, but this hard work eventually brings its own rewards. Delicate, absorbing and considered, this gentle collection eventually proves to be a more than endearing listen.
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