Paper Thin Stages "Flying Hearse" review in Northeast Performer

THANKS!!!

Paper Thin Stages have a healthy bond with adrenaline. So much of their latest album, Flying Hearse, happens simultaneously. While one voice echoes, a guitar somewhere is getting started and a beat goes off on a tangent. And without two or three things working at the same time, the other wouldn't exist. They're like a fusion of day and night happening at the exact same time.

The most noticeable aspect is the pace. It's uncomfortable because it's going in two or three or seven different directions. Then light, tenuous appearances of sound distortion and voices enter, and it all comes together. The rhythm is internal, and it flows regardless of how the body's blood pumps, mind races, or feet move. It's easy to just pick a beat and follow it, and the rest of it just cozies on up to a singular, frenzied motion.

The production here is like a mirror at a carnival. One presents the mirror with natural qualities, and symmetry. The result is a Picasso-like painting. Paper Thin Stages, comprised of Ed Hadley on percussion and bass, John Perotti on pedals and vocals and Nate McDermott on guitar and vocals, starts out with an innocent, untouched melody, and ultimately presents an album with sound so sweetly distorted that it's hard not to raise a glass to spontaneity.

Their longest track, "Flying Hearse," is like a runner's high for the musician. What once would concern itself with time, distance and speed, now sprints and saunters, but never hits the wall. Striking percussion takes over the piece and mellows only with the continuous pulsating tone in the foreground — or is that the background — that's decorated with an electronic frizzle of noise. (Sort of Records)

-Andrea Mooney