Getting to Know... Papercuts

Photo by Dana Laman

Humble and reserved, answering questions in a soft whisper and never seeming quite sure of exactly what he wants to say, Papercuts frontman Jason Quever is exactly the sort of person that you’d expect to make insular, introverted pop music—and that's just what dominates You Can Have What You Want, his band's third full-length release, out now on Gnomonsong Recordings. Hiding under layers of lo-fi fuzz, Quever casts memories and half-remembered dreams against a gorgeous backdrop of organ reverb, creating a singuar, enveloping sonic atmosphere that hangs heavy in the air after every play. Taking a few minutes away from producing the next record by fellow San Franciscans Port O’Brien, Quever recently talked to Paste about his musical intentions, the power of meaning and the pitfalls of getting what you want.

Paste: Did you have a specific idea for what you wanted You Can Have What You Want to sound like before you started recording?
Jason Quever: Yeah, I think I did. I was really excited about certain sounds that I wanted to get. I think I liked the idea of blown-out organs, so that was built into what the record had to be. A lot of the songs were written on organ, and I wanted to use less instruments, and I wanted it to be something that I could do live. So I tried to stick to mostly electric organs and electric guitars and not too many vocals. I don’t think there are any harmonies on the record. Maybe a couple, but I didn’t really double or stereo mic things. It was more about using fuzz and things like that to create atmosphere and pull back the actual amount of tracks. I definitely wanted to get a certain drum sound, too. I pretty much knew what I wanted when I went into it. But it’s always fun to leave it sort of up in the air. [Bandmates] Alex [Scally] and Graham [Hill] had some really good ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of, and accidents are always important. It’s good to roll with whatever sounds good, even if you didn’t plan on it, because once you hear it on tape, it’s a different thing than when you played it by yourself.

Paste: Did the songs change much from their demo versions?
Quever: Some did. “The Void”—we didn’t know how that was going to go. I didn’t have a demo of that one, and I probably didn’t demo “The Machine Will Tell Us So.” That version actually was a demo that turned into something we liked. But, no, I guess not a ton. Probably a little bit. Probably just an average amount. But… yeah, I guess so, because I played people the four-track version, and they weren’t that blown away. Or they didn’t tell me that until later. Later Alex was like, “Oh… this is going to be a good record,” but I don’t think he was getting the four-track record as much. He was real excited about it once we started doing it, and he didn’t let on at the time. I had a whole other album that I scrapped, and he liked those songs. But I got really bored with them because they sounded like the last one. I had really detailed demos of those songs. I had forgotten about that. I just remembered that yesterday, but for whatever reason I lost interest. It became really important to me not to repeat the last record. I started to hate that record.

Paste: What did you hate about it?
Quever: Oh… it’s just kind of traditional. It’s kind of easy. It has easy arrangements… I guess. Do you know what I mean?

Paste: Do you mean simple, or straightforward?
Quever: Yeah. There were two or three songs that—and not realizing it—I took an obvious form and just did it, because I know how to do that. I just feel more proud of this one, because I didn’t have a blueprint for it. I realized that it was something that I’m good at, and I was trying to be a traditional songwriter before, and I don’t think that’s really my strength. I wanted to be better at it than I had been before, and Can’t Go Back was me trying to learn the rules. But I realized at a certain point that that was a dead end, and I had to think my way out of that, because I don’t want to be this folky revivalist person. I think people were taking it like that, and that’s not interesting to me at all. It was accidental.

Paste: Listening to this record, the first thing that stood out is how enveloping the organ textures are. It seems like they create this sonic world that drew me into from the first time I hit play.
Quever: Cool! That’s great! Thank you. I think it seemed like that should be the goal, to try to create something unto itself. I just played my friend’s organ one day with too much reverb on it, and I thought, “OK, that’s a sound I really love. That could be a whole other direction.” So that’s when I wanted to throw away all of the old stuff, because I could just create something a little more transformative than acoustic guitar, drums and bass. I liked the idea of different instruments combining to create a new thing.

Paste: Absolutely. And it’s surprising, because the organ plays such a prominent role throughout the record, and yet the songs don’t sound repetitive. There’s a cohesiveness, but it doesn’t sound samey.
Quever: Well, cool. I think some people would disagree with you, but I appreciate that you don’t think that. I just told everyone “Don’t send any more press,” because it can be maddening. At first, when you put a record out, you want to see it how people see it, because you can’t possibly see it anymore. But it becomes maddening, because people say completely opposite things about it. You’ll say that [it isn’t repetitive], and then someone else will say, “It’s like one long mood piece that doesn’t change.” It’s frustrating.

Paste: Do people hear the music the same way that you hear it?
Quever: No, not at all! It’s funny. One of the reviews that was sent to me before I said “don’t send anymore” talked about how happy it was. And then I had some questions from NPR, and they were talking about how dark and a bummer the lyrics were, and that seemed way more accurate to me. People seem to be all over the map, which I’m sure is the case for everybody. But it’s a very dark record for me, topically. Maybe the music doesn’t sound like it, which is fine. I don’t want it to be morose or melodramatic or anything.

Paste: Well, it’s interesting that so many people can hear so many different things in an objective piece of art.
Quever: Yeah, and it’s strange to experience that, too. You have to go through talking to a lot of people about it. It’s a real roller-coaster, because you’re trying to relate to what people are saying. But I don’t listen to a record after I finish it. A lot of it is my memory of it. I had to listen to a song the other day because we were trying to learn it live, and it was so strange to put it on because it’s so different than my memory of it.

Paste: How was it different?
Quever: It was slower. I think the new stuff will be faster. When I went back to it, it felt like the song I thought was fast was slow. But when you’re in it, it seems fast, and then people talk about how slow your band is. And you’re like, “What are they talking about? It feels pretty fast.” And then you listen to other music and go back to it, and you’re like, “Oh, yeah. I do play pretty slow.”

Paste: So these songs came from a fairly dark period in your life?
Quever: Yeah… not in my reality, but I was on tour, and I think that brought back a lot of negative things in my past that I had to get out. Now I’m in a great place. I have a great relationship that I’ve had for years with my girlfriend, so it wasn’t super dark. No one died or anything. I was just on a pretty long and isolated tour, so I think my thoughts got pretty dark, and it brought back some negativity. Looking back on it, I think when I got home I started to process that and what it meant, and I think it was therapeutic.

Paste: Some of the songs are pretty harrowing. “Dead Love” is inescapably dark.
Quever: Yeah… totally. Completely. But it sounds kind of happy. I think I was trying to reason with that, like, “How can those words be with music that’s kind of upbeat?” But all I could think of was that it feels good to put your finger on a feeling that you’re hiding. So, it’s a nice release, I guess, to deal with those feelings. I’m sure everyone feels like that. I guess it’s complicated, but I was just saying this to someone else about how I grew up in this commune for the first few years of my life, and I remember hearing about Armageddon and the end times. So I think that song is about how sometimes you watch the news and get to thinking about how everything will end. But there’s definitely some positive stuff, too. “Future Primitive” is really positive. I was just working it out. That’s why it was important for me, because I have a lot to work out. I had a therapy session after that about how I have been holding on to negative feelings about elementary school my whole life. That was totally from writing those songs that made me realize those things. Feeling like a complete outsider and always hanging on to that—it’s so silly.

Paste: It’s interesting that you say that, because it seems like a lot of the songs have a dreamlike quality to them, almost as if I’m watching someone project their memory onto a screen.
Quever: I love that imagery that you used. That’s nice. That’s the way I’d like someone to describe it. That feels like it resonates with me, because it’s not stream-of-consciousness, but it’s not conversational, either. I think that seems right, like a recollection of a situation that’s kind of blurry. Also, a lot of people asked me what I listened to while I was making the record, and I was really into super-poppy stuff like Lykke Li. I thought maybe this was like an impressionistic version of that pop stuff. It’s hinting at something, but I don’t really like to go for the love song. It’s more personal, like weird memories or thoughts and dreamy kinds of things.

Paste: Do you tend to write from your subconscious?
Quever: Sometimes, yeah. I never think, “Well, this song’s about that,” until later. I know that it feels important. I just try to write something once I think of a main idea that has some drama in it. I try to not make it personal at all, like about myself, because I feel like that doesn’t work for me. So it has to have a character or a point of view that’s different from, “I’m sad today / Nobody loves me.” [Laughs] It’s conscious, but I definitely don’t think about what it means until later. So when I’m talking to you about what the songs are about, I wasn’t thinking about that at the time, even though it’s really obvious later. I don’t know how to define those things. I definitely refine things a lot. It’s important to me to have everything mean something. Growing up in the 90s, it felt like a lot of indie stuff—and a lot of stuff that I love to death—was really disjointed. At some point I had to decide that I wasn’t good at that. Some people can just do that, like my friend Donovan Quinn. Every line he writes is cool. They all mean something, but even if they didn’t, every line is interesting. For me, I enjoy telling a story, and part of me needs that even if it’s not obvious what it’s about.

Paste: It seems like a lot of these songs have a certain direction to them. They start some place and end up in another.
Quever: It’s like a linear narrative. I would say that, for sure. I’m trying to make some point of view go somewhere and take it somewhere. I think there is one song that doesn’t go anywhere. “You Can Have What You Want”—that song doesn’t go anywhere. I think of that like how you said about memories, and that is one where every line is connected to a memory. The rest, I feel like I’m trying to advance a situation and trying to inject some sort of drama into an idea or a figure. It’s like Twilight Zone, like a person where his environment is against him. That’s my ideal writing style. Not saying that I choose that, but that’s what’s inspiring to me lately, that show and the way they unfold that. And I had sort of a strange childhood, too. I think I always felt like the world was aware of me in a weird way. [Laughs] It’s from isolation, I guess. You start to think those strange thoughts. Maybe this is getting back to that and dealing with it. I think a lot of people do that. I don’t think it’s anything particularly unique. If you spent a lot of time alone as a kid, you probably see the world in a strange way. I think I probably relate to Twilight Zone in that way.

Paste: Yeah, I like how this album has an isolated feel to it. It sounds like a group of people locked in a room somewhere, in this place that I’ve never been, and they’re projecting their memories onto the backdrop of these beautifully rolling organs.
Quever: Well, that’s great. That’s probably something that you should write and put on my tombstone after I die! I don’t know how long you can do something like that, because it’s a little elusive, but it’s what I like. Like you picture someone on another plane, someone jamming in an alternate universe basement or something. [Laughs] That’s great, but some people don’t see it that way. They see it as a 60s thing or whatever, so I’ll take it when I can get it. [Laughs] I’m definitely humble enough to really appreciate it when someone does see it that way. It means a lot to me.

Paste: Well, listening to it, I have trouble making clear reference points to something else.
Quever: That seemed to be the goal. That’s why I rejected and started to resent the last record, because it is too much like other things, and it doesn’t have to be like that. I know how to do other things, and I realize that I should be trying to do things instead of playing by the book. I was at the point where I knew how to do other things and I could see how much farther I could go with it.

Paste: What inspired “The Machine Will Tell Us So”?
Quever: It’s definitely the most Twilight Zone-y concept. I could tell you the story behind it that probably isn’t clear from the lyrics, and there’s actually going to be a video that really details it. We’re going to do a stop[-motion] animation video that tells the whole story, because I realized that I wasn’t really able to do the whole thing. But the idea is that the state is telling someone that they are going to space, but they are really killing him to monitor his response to death. So it says, “If bliss lies beyond, the machine will tell us so.” It’s kind of dark, I guess. [Laughs] That’s why I didn’t want to come out and say it. I think just alluding to the idea of coercion… and I had a realization later that it’s definitely like elementary school, just that you’re losing part of yourself as you go into society.

Paste: It’s a really potent image.
Quever: I found it really hard to describe the whole story, because I had a very detailed story in my mind. I guess I thought of the video as I was writing the song, so I thought of the whole thing, but I realized that there was no way to really detail it without being too literal. That’s another thing that bummed me out last time. People are never going to understand what I’m trying to say, so I stopped trying to be literal. I’m just not that good at it. My friend Cass McCombs is a really good lyricist, but I don’t know if people always get what he’s saying, either. But I took it as, “Well, I’m not good at being clear, so I’m not going to try.” I had a song on the last record called “Sandy,” which was from the point of view of parents talking to their child. But I remember one guy wrote about it and called it “an ode to teenage sex.” That was sad to me, and that influenced my outlook, how that disconnect was there.

Paste: Does it matter to you how people interpret your songs?
Quever: I’m trying to let go of that now. I think it did, and now it doesn’t. You have to let go of certain ideas you have of what it will be like when people start reviewing your music. There’s no way you can know until you go through it, and there certainly was a period where it was really disappointing. But some of it was totally justified, some of the negative things. I don’t enjoy it at all, but I’m as hard on myself as anyone and the negative things I tend to believe more than the positive. But I don’t really care much anymore. I would rather that people would say that they don’t like it than to say that it sounds retro. But the publicist sends me reviews that say, “It’s good, but it’s this or that.” And that’s like putting an asterisk next to Barry Bonds’ name. “It’s good, but it doesn’t matter.” That’s the only thing that bothers me. I don’t care about people knowing what my intention is anymore. I’m focused on the next thing already, and I think it’s dangerous to get too attached to your own work and worry about how people are going to take it.

Paste: About how old were you when you started writing songs?
Quever: Probably 15 or 16.

Paste: Did it take you long to find your feet as a songwriter?
Quever: Yeah, singing and stuff, I was very scared of it. I was always determined to do it, but I felt like I couldn’t. I assumed I wouldn’t be good at it, but I got a four-track and spent a lot of time getting used to it. I really clearly remember the first time that my stepbrother complimented my voice, and it was incredible, like, “Oh, wow. Maybe I could do that,” because I wanted to so badly. But it took so long for me to become comfortable. That’s a moment that I remember, and then writing a song that was honest and having people respond to that the most. I thought, “OK, all I have to do is be honest and people will like it.” I think when I was young, I was trying to come up with some sort of angle or trying to emulate people or be cool. I think the less I tried to be cool, the better it was. I think I figured that out from people’s reactions, and at that point I knew how to do it. You can’t trick people. Music is one of those things that people either like or they don’t. There’s no reason why. I know some people try to figure it out, but I still believe that there’s a spiritual element. If you’re being honest, people will sense it. I’ve thrown away so many songs, and I’ve been like, “I need a new song!” And I’ll write a song, and I’ll be like, “I need a song that’s fast or slow.” And you try to force it and it doesn’t work.

Paste: Do you come from a musical family?
Quever: I don’t really come from a family. [Laughs] I guess my dad played guitar, but I didn’t know him very well at all. My mom did not play anything. She used to sing and play tambourine in the church and around the house. She played Bob Dylan really loud, and it really embarrassed me when she’d play tambourine to it. But I don’t remember ever seeing my dad play, so I don’t know what the deal is there.

Paste: Did you grow up surrounded by music?
Quever: No, I guess not. I just created that. I was obsessed with it from early on. My sister was a couple of years older than me, and she was what they called the stoner at the time. [Laughs] So a lot of Led Zeppelin and The Beatles. I remember hearing The Beatles, and like a lot of people, that changed me. It was like, “OK, this is, like, art.” It’s something that can take your whole life. Even when I was young, I remember thinking about how cool the snare sounded on the white album. I just created that for myself. No one around me was pushing music on me. I just begged for guitar lessons, even though we couldn’t afford it. I had to beg for a year before I could get it, which was probably cooler than if they had forced it on me. I really wanted it, and I had to prove that I deserved it. We couldn’t afford it, so I had to take it seriously.

Paste: When did you form your first band?
Quever: I moved to Portland when I was 20, and then I started a band with my friend that moved there with me. We did that for a year or two. And then I moved back to San Francisco and started making four-track tapes in ’99 or 2000.

Paste: At the point where you made your first record, were you pretty confident in your songwriting at the time?
Quever: Well… not really. Well, I guess so. I did a CD around 2000, but it wasn’t really put out. I just made something with my friend, Owen, from Casiotone [for the Painfully Alone]. I don’t really consider that a record. By the time that I did the first one that actually got out into the world, which was Mockingbird, I felt like I’d had a lot of practice. I felt like I’d done a couple collections of songs and was used to the cycle.

Paste: What did you think of the response to that record?
Quever: I don’t know. There wasn’t really much of one. When you put out a record on a small label and without a publicist, the only people who write about it are people who like it, so it was positive. It was encouraging. I think it’s good to take a slow progression. Every time I do it, I get a little tougher skin. If there was as much tension that there is now on the first one, I probably wouldn’t have handled it. It probably would have really hurt me a lot. It got four stars in Uncut, and that was really huge. But there were a lot of points where I didn’t feel like I was supposed to be doing this, like no one cares and that I was just making a fool of myself. So when you get a good review in a magazine that you actually read, it’s pretty amazing. If that hadn’t happened then, I don’t know how I would have taken the whole thing. Just one thing like that really encouraged me.

Paste: Did you approach the second album [2007’s Can’t Go Back] differently?
Quever: Yeah, and I think that was probably a mistake. I tried to make it simpler, because I think I felt like, “Oh, this isn’t connecting, so I need to make it more pop or something.” And that was probably a big mistake. So then I realized, “No, that isn’t the problem. I just shouldn’t have a publicist, so I can do whatever I want.” [Laughs] As long as I’m not paying someone to get it out into the world, people will listen to it, and there will be someone who likes it. There are a lot of people in this world, and most people have an audience. That was cool, because I realized I could do what I want this time. You Can Have What You Want—I put a five minute song up front, which would have been a bad idea if I was worrying too much about that kind of thing. I figured, well, people are sophisticated these days. Everyone knows about much more odd stuff than what I’m doing. The idea that I had to simplify was totally false.

Paste: Did it seem like there was any moment when your name was starting to catch on with people?
Quever: I don’t know. It’s odd. Things trickle in to you, but you don’t really know for sure. I try not to think about it. I’ve been doing it for so long now, and it has gone slowly. It’s definitely great and more encouraging. I definitely like the idea that if I make records people will want to check it out. I don’t have much perspective. It’s very abstract to me, people listening to Papercuts. I just try to stay focused on the next thing.

Paste: I think a lot of people came across Papercuts because of the Grizzly Bear tour.
Quever: Hmm. That’s frustrating to me, because I don’t feel like we sounded very good on that tour. That wasn’t a great experience for me, because I hadn’t gone on tour much. That band was somewhat thrown together, and that record was really hard to play live. I think it was frustrating in that way that it was a big tour, and I didn’t realize how much that would get people checking us out. I probably wasn’t ready for it, psychologically, to be opening for someone that was that popular. We got some good reviews for that record, but I wasn’t really enjoying it, because it didn’t sound good to me. That’s why I’m looking forward to this tour, because I’ve learned a lot about how to get the sounds like how you wrote it and arranged it. Grizzly Bear sounds so amazing live that it’s a lot to live up to. My concept of what I was doing was different then, and I don’t think I was realistic about what I was doing. I was just belting it out. At least now, I think it sounds like the record.

Paste: I was also wondering what inspired the title of the record.
Quever: It’s like someone traveling to another space, looking for something that they’ve left behind. Or it’s not there. It doesn’t matter how far you go, the answer is always somehow elusive, just happiness or what you want. I guess that title is, like, a frustrating thought to me, because everything seems so obvious. You consciously know what you should be doing most of the time, but most of the people that I know still aren’t happy. Not that I’m not happy; I am. But it also has a double meaning, like a “Fuck off,” like if you break up with somebody. So it has that meaning for me, too. But all of the songs seemed like they were about people being in situations where they were trying to find their answer or be who someone wants them to be. Like “The Machine Will Tell Us So” is like, “Well, I guess you’ll have to kill me to get what you want.” Or “The Wolf” is about someone who feels like an animal and is begging and pleading, like, “I won’t do that anymore.”

Paste: So it’s like, you can get what you want, but you might be sorry?
Quever: I think it’s a phrase that rings out to me because it’s true and it isn’t. So, I felt like a lot of the figures in each song were looking for something and were trying to find whatever they think they’re looking for. But it’s elusive; it’s not there. That’s the drama to me, that it’s not true. That’s why I find it funny when people say, “That’s such a positive title!” And I’m like, “Well… no. If you look at the cover, it’s people jumping into space. It’s basically suicide.” That cover was drawn about people having this religious experience in space and jumping out into space. That, to me, fits the title perfectly, looking for the next life or whatever. You can get what you want, but you have to do that.

Listen to the title track from Papercuts' You Can Have What You Want: