Loma Vista Recordings
4/5 stars
PAPA has arrived and is here to take you on a tour of the American soul.
The band, whose debut album "Tender Madness" dropped on Tuesday, is the brainchild of former Girls drummer Darren Weiss. After leaving the band in 2012, Weiss joined his childhood best friend Daniel Presant to work on PAPA in New York City. New York provided a departure in style and location from the L.A.-based and aggressively indie Girls. PAPA is now back in California, and Weiss is paying bills by drumming for other people, but it keeps the East Coast edge it needs to distance itself from Girls.
Weiss has previously mentioned that PAPA intends to represent ideals of “America, women and insanity”—a different kind of holy trinity than Girls’s sophomore album, "Father, Son, Holy Ghost." With PAPA, Weiss and Presant bring a faster and deeper sound than did his old band: ambitious, complicated, and unholy like America itself.
The album begins with a lyric-less introduction, an epic instrumental opening with a nebulous music source and an elementary piano melody plodding along. This track, and the rest of the Springsteen-inspired Americana album, verges on a weepy movie grandeur but is too tightly written to feel sad. The Wolfmother-like fadeouts remind you not to take any of the emotional swells too seriously.
'Put Me to Work' digs into Weiss’s yawning vocals, which are of a pleasantly similar register as Morrissey but deliberately less clearcut. He melds into the rhythm-heavy instruments, which are so blended at times that it’s hard to tell what is what. With dreary, nostalgic lyrics like “I’ll be the hand on many a crucifix / I’ll be the open house from when we were kids,” he balances out the song's energetic strums.
PAPA has something to prove after its memorable EP "A Good Woman is Hard to Find," which put out fast and fascinating sounds showcasing both Weiss’s vocals and drumming. Not every track here, though, lives up to the hype. 'If the Moon Rises' has so far been interpreted as the trademark song of the album for its obvious messaging: “Ain’t it so good to be young / In America and watch the world burn.” But it starts slow and picks up late, holding onto a subdued Vampire Weekend tone for too long before the progressive strums come in.
It’s deeper into the track on 'If You’re My Girl, Then I’m Your Man' that we get the freshest sound on the album. Weiss’s voice is urgent, singing ever so slightly ahead of the beat, and pulls in Presant for surprisingly shrewd harmonies. This is PAPA's one romantic indulgence, but it sounds like re-imagined indie pop. 'Get Me Through the Night' is also satisfyingly rock. Its progressions are redundant enough to sound grungy, but as always, Weiss’s smooth voice makes for a pleasant contraction.
Although some tracks are more memorable than others, you can’t say that any are similar to each other. By the time "Tender Madness" is over, you feel like you have to go back and check it again to see if it was as good as you thought, like a perfect weekend you’re not sure you didn’t just dream up.
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