Paper Masques
'I want to let other people fill in themselves.'
Listen to Paper Masques in our Umm...Drop podcast.
Steve Quaranta has come a long way from the 15-minute-a-week group piano lessons he had while attending grade school. Since forming Paper Masques close to six months ago, the onetime member of Zelda Pinwheel (the band is on unofficial hiatus) has already released an EP and is set to release its first long-player Saturday night at the Fire. Tell the Ghosts It’s Suppertime bursts with impassioned drum beats, frentic electric guitar riffs and gently strummed acoustic chords. You’ll even hear a kazoo on a few tracks.
“I wanted to write more structured, song-oriented material, as opposed to the weird, semi-improvised stuff we were doing with Zelda Pinwheel. I wanted to see what would happen if I reined myself in and did things that were more vocal-oriented,” Quaranta explains.
As he began to focus more on songwriting and vocals, Quaranta was also able to approach lyrics in an unusual way. “People that have been in my life, either real or imaginary, interact throughout [the album],” he says. “[The songs] are kind of snapshots. I’m not trying to tell whole stories—I’m giving pieces of dialogue or little images and leaving big holes that I want to let other people fill in themselves.”
Quaranta began Paper Masques as a solo acoustic project, but at the urging of Jonas Oesterle—host of the Fire’s open mic night and eventual Paper Masques drummer—Quaranta expanded his work to feature a full band. Normally a four-piece, the album features 13 musicians, and Quaranta aims to bring most of them out for the album release show.
“It’s going to kind of be a complicated stage plot, but I think we’ve got it worked out pretty well.”
COMMENTS
ADD COMMENT
MORE
Article:
Ian McCarthy and Conservative Man
Article:
Shawn Kilroy
Article:
Grimace Federation
Article:
Delco Nightingale
Article:
Espers
Article:
LMFAO
Article:
Brother JT
Article:
Shot x Shot
1. jk & the lmnopies said... on Mar 18, 2009 at 10:49PM
“there used to be a time where a section of the open mic list was reserved for steve and friends. actually, it's still that way and it's still my favorite 30-45 minutes of monday night.
i can't wait to hear this record!
”