Paper Tigers harness a collective societal tension on debut album ‘Charmer’
The Boston alt-indie band unleashes an adrenalized exhale of a full-length record on Tuesday, September 19
Paper Tigers performed live at In Between Days music festival in August
BOSTON, MA [September 19, 2023] -- When Paper Tigers took the stage at In Between Days music festival in mid-August, a simple message was displayed on a flag, front and center for all to see: “These are the good old days.” It was a bold declaration, and one that anyone who was alive for the past few years might be quick to dispute. But much like the Boston alt-indie band’s music, what is presented on the surface and what is delivered underneath are two completely separate entities.
That duality is amplified on Charmer, Paper Tigers’ explosive and acerbic debut album that hits the streams on Tuesday, September 19. The midweek release date itself is a throwback to yesterday, as is the music contained: 10 adrenalized guitar-rock songs – led by summer singles “Wedding Cake,” “Into That Good Night,” and the title track – that undermine the album’s comfortable title. Charmer is a rock record with a pop polish, and a pop record with rock edge; the more the listener peels back each lyrical and sonic layer, tying together the band’s disparate sound that incorporate post-punk, grunge, Britpop, and American indie, the more reality’s grim nature starts to come into view.
And that’s understandable for the dynamic band, which formed in Allston in 2019 and quickly weathered a global pandemic, a venue crisis in their home city, a growing national hostility to the arts and those who create it, and collective whirlwind of insanity that seems to mark each day. Charmer, and all its furious ambition, is the ultimate release for Paper Tigers, a burning exhale that follows a string of four EPs and several singles, including last year’s breakout I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me This Sooner (which secretly contained a snippet of the new album’s title track).
“We’re proud of this album,” declares Paper Tigers. “With each release, we pushed ourselves both in terms of songwriting and production and this was the culmination of everything we learned about both. It represents the very best we’re capable of and we wouldn’t change a thing about it. With every song we write or piece of art we create, we just hope it connects with our audience in some special way. This LP represents our most thought-out and effortful body of work to-date. We’re hoping it elevates our fan’s perspective of the band and that they’re drawn back to it, many times.”
Repeated listens is where the elements begin to shine: The razor-sharp guitarwork and production of Bjarki Guðmundsson; the heavy, absorbing basslines of Matthew Hughes; the thunderous drums and atmospheric percussion of Ben "Cutty" Cuthbert; and the sardonic vocals of Michael Medlock, a man with a street preacher urgency hellbent on warning the world both of the dangers within and an optimistic way out.
From heralding the age of revolution and its dissemination through media (“Pariah”) to ‘90s grunge-era conspiracy theories (“Soft Focus”), Charmer is a lyrically confrontational album as Medlock registers and relays the world around him. As he sings in the swirling, paranoid album track “The Drugs Are Kicking In”: “Modern living made life easy / But it also made us angrier.”
“The lyrics on Charmer are both anecdotal and narrative,” the band admits. “Sometimes Michael is singing from his own perspective and other times he’s writing fiction. His lyrics orbit around love, loss, personal life experiences and his hopes for the future.”
The storylines that emerge through the calculated noise are plentiful, and remain open to listener interpretation. But one aspect of Charmer that was made clear from the start was the ability to convey these songs in a precise and crystalline manner, made possible in part by work done at both Paper Tigers’ home studio at Cataclysmic Records in Brighton, and with recording engineer Alex Allinson at The Bridge Sound and Stage just across the Charles River in Cambridge.
“In the past, we’ve tried to do as much as we can by ourselves,” says Paper Tigers. “There was a time when we saw it as a way to speed up the learning curve of being a band. It would have been fun to go into a proper recording studio for the first EPs, but we needed to do all that homework and run into all the obstacles to progress as a band and songwriters. We met up with Alex Allinson at The Bridge and pitched the idea of tracking live versions of the songs in the studio, to capture drums. We ended up getting so much more than drums during that one-day session, thanks to Alex. He went above and beyond, made us feel comfortable, and was able to dial in the perfect sound in a matter of seconds. Having those great-sounding tracks from Alex made the process so much easier, and because of that, we could allocate more of our time to the creative side of production than before.”
And of course, with an album’s worth of material, there was more to embrace on that creative side of production. A person will tell anyone who listens that we’re living in the age of the single, and the album format is dead. But Paper Tigers have made a habit of defying convention, and dropping a full-length right in the busy side of the fall calendar is their way of making the statement they want to make. Charmer is that statement.
“The album format is more forgiving to experimentation and allows us to deviate from our approach without losing what was there before,” the band reveals. “There’s more room for ambiguity and more space for musical themes to play out without becoming overly familiar. You can drop more crumbs throughout the album and get your point across in a more thought-out way. Needless to say, all of us are music geeks and have special relationships with the LP format. There is just something special about listening to an album from beginning to end. Even though we live in these fast-paced times of singles and clips, there’s no harm in offering the listener the full experience.”
Just like back in the good old days.
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Paper Tigers are:
Michael Medlock - Vocals and lyrics
Bjarki Guðmundsson - Guitar and miscellaneous instruments
Matthew Hughes - Bass, guitar, and backing vocals
Ben "Cutty" Cuthbert - Drums, percussion and backing vocals
‘Charmer’ album lyrics and liner notes:
‘Charmer’ credits:
All songs written by Paper Tigers
Mixed and mastered by Bjarki Gudmundsson
Recorded and engineered at by Alex Allinson at The Bridge Sound and Stage, Cambridge, MA, and Cataclysmic Records, Brighton MA
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Media praise for Paper Tigers:
“Paper Tigers has joined the ranks among the city’s must-watch Boston bands.”
_Boston.com Music Club
“If there are any rock bands in Boston that could be poised to be The Next Big Thing, it's Paper Tigers.”
_If It’s Too Loud
“‘A Portrait of a Scene’ has a frenetic edge to it, swelling from its tightly wound opening and exploding in its bracing chorus… Between its liberal use of fuzzed out guitars and a swiftly shifting tempo, the song has enough twists and turns to keep even the most jaded listener’s attention.”
_Worcester Magazine
“Paper Tigers — one of the most fiery and thrilling alt-rock outfits to set up shop in Boston.”
_Sound of Boston
"Paper Tigers make a timeless kind of music that is, at times, deeply embedded in the ’90’s Boston scene mixed with a new school Punk aesthetic akin to CKY’s earlier recordings... [They] pack quite the sonic wallop over five tracks of infectious and undeniable Rawk."
_Rock And Roll Fables
"'Goldmine'... showcases the band's dynamic and musically technical side, similar to the likes of Thrice with their meticulous musical wizardry put forth on magical display."
_Music Box Pete
“A new sense of swagger.”
_1st 3 Magazine
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The music of Paper Tigers can be heard on:
Boston.com’s Music Club, WXRY Discovery, WZBC’s Virtual Detention, BumbleBee Radio, UncertainFM, Boston Emissions with Anngelle Wood, Your First Listen (KNNZ), Boston Magazine, Vanyaland, Karen’s Indies on Belter Radio (UK), Audiomack Essentials, Christian’s Cosmic Corner, Original Music Showcase, and Marc’s Alt-Rock Playground on Mark Skin Radio, Banks Radio Australia, New England Sounds, Rising With Skybar and On The Town With Mikey Dee on WMFO Tufts Radio, Everything You Know Is Wrong on Salem State Radio, Code Zero Radio, Music Box Pete, Rock & Roll Fables, Boston Groupie News, Metronome Magazine, Tinnitist, Monie’s New Music Radio (UK), Eagles Nest Radio, WODU Old Dominion Radio, Radio Warfare with Tim Livingston, Valley FM in Canberra (AUS), Lonely Oak Radio, This Is Only Rock Radio (Spain), Sunshine iMusic Radio, The Bad Copy, 1st 3 Magazine, and other fine stations and shows.
