the pAper chAse -wt What Big Teeth You Have -wl Southern -wf The genuinely scary pAper chAse follow their coming-of-age third album Hide The Kitchen Knives with this three-track CD-single that features one new song, a couple of cover versions and a music video to Kitchen Knives’s “Don’t You Wish You Had Some More” (the first half of it looks good, but my computer refuses to play anything beyond that). Those already familiar with John Congleton and his raving mad band will recognize the paranoid rock attack, the skewed epic rock and the Nick Cave-meets-Conor Oberst post-punk/no-wave frenzy, but if this single is anything to go by, the pAper chAse has actually managed to improve on their already impressive style. They sound much more focused than before, with a more clearly defined sense of what the hell they’re trying to do. -wm The music is as stumblingly crazy and horrified as ever, but some of the confused frenzy has been replaced by a more controlled, and in turn genuine, sense of harrowed creepiness. It’s best witnessed on the single’s lead track, “Everyone Knows How This Song Will End,” on which Congleton steers the band off to a new and more disturbing position, with a devastatingly clear build-up. -wm Meanwhile, “My Death,” the Jacques Brel song, sounds like the Bad Seeds in a confused widescreen mood. Absolutely brilliant! The version of Roger Waters’s “Go Fishing” (from The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking) is less impressive, perhaps because Congleton’s vocals steer too close to Waters’s. But all that’s relative; other bands have built entire careers on lesser songs than this. Mesmerizing, wonderful and genuinely disturbed, this is a great new offering from one of the most stylish, gruesome and horrifically great bands out there today. Get this. -wd Southern: http://www.southern.com/ -wb Stein Haukland