The Paper Chase - Hide The Kitchen Knives (2002)

Thirteen songs, forty-six minutes. Their third album and debut release for Southern. Guitars all over the shop, hard ass drumming and an infatuation with the weird and macabre.

This is a harrowing fucking record. This is a record where blood spilt from the fresh wounds of a recently finished relationship stains every single note. This is a record where the echoes of the last argument are still ringing through every syllable of John Congleton's lyrics. Hide the Kitchen Knives is a fucking harsh listen.

Hide the Kitchen Knives is the pAper chAse's second album, their first for Southern. It deals with emotions. Not in the rich kid, college boy, whining-because-you-can't-find-a-girlfriend, way that the current crop of "emo" bands are allegedly dealing in emotions. This deals with REAL emotional purgatory. This is a record that captures the moment at the end of the relationship where you really do wish the other person dead; where once you would do anything for them, you now wish nothing but harm to come to yourself and your former lover. Images of the knives and blades and death and physical pain reoccur through the lyric sheet. All this is screamed by vocalist John Congleton as though it's going to be the last thing that's ever going to come out of his mouth.

The music is in as much as an emotional mess as the lyrics. John Congleton's guitar retches and writhes around the song almost at random, though you know everything is premeditated. The arrangements have a no-wave minimalism, without resorting to the PIL/Gang of Four cliches that so many bands fall back on at the moment. Discords, spikey rhythms and messed up instrumentation (pianos, horns, cellos) makes this record sound like nothing else.

This was never meant to be an easy listen. It's an intense glimpse into feelings that you make sure you keep locked away in the depths of your psyche. But persist with it, as with all ugliest things, it's also fascinatingly beautiful.