by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
It’s been eight long long years since Chicago’s Paper Mice released their sophomore album The Funny Papers. In a rare twist of good fate however, the trio are back, and set to release their upcoming record, 1-800-MONDAYS, together once again with Three One G (Deaf Club, INUS, Planet B) on May 7th. The band’s advanced blend of prog and punk is at times atonal and harsh, leaning toward noise rock tendencies, and at others closer toward the surreal art rock end of the spectrum. Which is to say the band are able to make music that’s endlessly interesting, with challenging compositions that never feel challenging to listen to. Much like their first two albums, Paper Mice’s latest once again pulls their stories from newspaper headlines, and thankfully they picked some of the lighter and more hilarious articles.
Lead single “The Cynic Route” happens to be about a group of Russian men who decided to illegally cross over a bridge disguised as a yellow school bus… which happened back in 2018). The song is pretty damn hilarious, explaining the situation of the very real bridge that pedestrians can’t cross and idea to instead dress up as a bus to try and take the short-cut through town. There are some very excellent lines like “I won’t lie and pretend we were drunk when we did or that we won’t try it again” and “it was a novel solution, thought inside of the box.” The video is directed by NNAMDÏ, recently named Chicago’s own king of pop, capturing the lyrical subject matter and the potential events that lead up to it. We’ve all had days like that and sometimes you must become the bus.