Paper Jays

Providence’s Paper Jays add a bit of fry to the folk scene for 2024 with their eponymous album for ESP-Disk. Built on a bed of fingerpicked folk, the album finds Justin Hubbard and Jesse Cohen sparring strings — working repeated phrasing, circular motions, and menacing feedback into squalls of psych-folk that warp and warble the space and time around them. With a slipped-disc rhythmic shuffle from Matt Crane popping and pounding behind them, the trio seeks to dip the delicacies of folk in pine tar and turpentine and set it smoldering like a curdled batch of incense. Drawing the listener into their den, the band finds the balance between folklore and noise, letting traditions crumble between their strings, kindred spirits to the likes of Daniel Bachman, Old Saw, and Milkweed.

Drones rumble under the band’s tangle of electric and acoustic interplay, growling from the distance but just as often growing to fuming focus, another member of the band bending time with Hubbard and Cohen. The record pulls as much from the Takoma school’s standards as it does from Steffen Basho-Junghans centripetal hypnotics and Tetuzi Akyama’s attempts to pull folk apart at its seams. The record wraps the listener like a sandpaper blanket, a caustic comfort that’s constantly at odds with itself. It’s a perfect listen to embrace the bleak days of winter ahead while warding off the creeping chill that sinks down to the bones.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.