Holiday Sabbatical and Dean’s Year End List

Hi,

It’s the Holiday Season and while most bands work feverishly during these weeks, we here in PAPERMAPS have decided to take a 3-week sabbatical. We’ll be reconvening in January and plan to play our hometown  February 7 at one of our favorite venues in town (hint, it has the word “shoe” in its name – more details and to come).  Since distilling the lineup down to Betty, Bobby and myself, we’ve been working on new material with hopes of a summertime 2013 release and tour(s). Our secondary hope is to preview much of that new material at our February 7 show. Let’s keep the fingers crossed…

Every year I do a little “year end” list of vinyl albums that I purchased that year – not counting records from previous years, oldies or classic albums, etc., which I shamefully buy a lot of…As always, some of these records were the soundtrack of my year, while others collected dust…but something convinced me to buy them…Here they are in no particular order:

Tender New Signs – Tamaryn
Crayon Wars – Wendy Versus (ok, I played on this album, but it did come out on vinyl)
Self-Titled – Paper Beat Scissors
Clear Moon – Mount Eerie
Lowbanks – From East to Exit (ok, I produced this…but it came out on vinyl)
The Only Place – Best Coast
Worship – A Place to Bury Strangers
Wild Peace – Echo Lake
Self-Titled – Metz
Self-Titled – VISTAVISON (I also produced this one, but it’s out on vinyl now and one of my faves)

And there you have it…the 4th annual “Dean’s Year End List.”

Not counted here, but given honorable mention is the seminal post-rock/neo-jazz band, Talk Talk and their 2012 reissued/remastered Spirit of Eden.

Cheers and Happy Holidays,

-dean

New Music Video for “Nobody Gets It,” by Kerry Shaw

Since Monday (six days ago) our latest music video for “Nobody Gets It,” has been available for stream on Exclaim.ca. The video is now available on YOUTUBE for the rest of the world to see:

This video was envisioned and directed by the very talented photographer Kerry Shaw. We here in the PAPERMAPS camp love it! It’s hard to describe. Perhaps Kerry’s own words sum it up best:

Nobody’s perfect. A notion we tend to forget when we look at our partner, our colleagues, our family, ourselves. We are creatures of expectation and with that comes the tendency to overlook just how amazing the people truly are around us. Papermaps have compiled a song that explores the anger in desiring perfection, the frustration of someone not living up to our idea of who we think they should be. Perfect. I contradict these lyrics with a montage of appreciation. Specifically, images of women. The female form, movement and overall imperfections and actions of women. All kinds of women…This is not an in-your-face, socio-political “oh, look at how women are being over-sexuallised/distorted in media/over-beautied” kind of dialogue.  Rather, this is a study of the female face, body, hair, movement, etc. A slightly dark celebration.

For us in the group it was a fun and simple video to make.  We each only had to be there a few hours or so. The bulk of the video was done over several days in Kerry’s studio with the many lovely models.  We are thankful to all the ladies who volunteered their time and image for this video – you are the real stars! This clip features all the members of PAPERMAPS lip syncing the song, including Wendy and Todd who had officially left the group before  filming but gracefully agreed to participate.  This video is not only a celebration of beauty in diversity but is also, on a more personal level, a celebration of PAPERMAPS’ former lineup.

Have a look and let us know what you think!

-d