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Parallel Line

by Paper Beat Scissors

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    12" black vinyl pressed at Germany's Optimal plant + full-colour jacket printed on semi-gloss with double-sided insert

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    4-panel full-colour CD package with 18pt jacket on semi-gloss stock and 12-panel lyric insert

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about

"Soars with warm folk-pop and a tongue-in-cheek smile at hypocrisy and privilege." - Atwood Magazine

“serene” – NPR

“cheeky and buoyant” – CBC Music

"Crabtree, a singer whose songs are always deeply infused with emotion, connects with his listener on such a level that he freezes time" - Folk Radio UK

"lush chamber orchestration" - Various Small Flames

"vulnerable and earnest without slipping into sappiness" (8/10) -Exclaim!

A delicately expansive collection of chamber folk, the new album from Paper Beat Scissors reaches to far-off wonderment and far-in feelings with ease. Parallel Line explores all the mess and complexity inherent in our day-to-day existence with a quiet, wide-eyed vulnerability.

This third full length, mixed by heavyweights Sandro Perri and Dean Nelson (Beck), centres Tim Crabtree’s arresting vocal work and reflective lyrical palette to stunning effect. Each song’s movement is threaded by gorgeous string arrangements, weaving an emotional core to the record. At its centre sits a question: how is our sense of self strung within a multitude of people, places, experiences? Parallel Line unfurls as a series of (un)certainties, shot through with a visceral tenderness.

credits

released September 13, 2019

Recorded by

Andy Magoffin at the House of Miracles, Cambridge, ON (1-4, 7-11),
Ben Palmai at Mixart, Montreal, QC (4,5,8,10,11),
Tim Crabtree, Steven Newton and Pietro Amato at Skybarn, Montreal, QC (1,2,3,6,7,8,9),
Tim Crabtree at Heritage Bingo, Montreal, QC (1-11)
Mum and Dad’s in Read, Lancashire, UK (4,10)
Michael Feuerstack at Salad Feelings, Montreal, QC (8,9)
Edo Van Breemen at Gold Hippie Studios, Vancouver, BC (2,3,7)

Mixed by

Dean Nelson (1,2,4,5,8,10,11) in London, ON
Sandro Perri (3,7,9) in Toronto, ON
Tim Crabtree (6) in Montreal, QC

Produced by Tim Crabtree

Mastered by Andy Magoffin at the House of Miracles, Cambridge, ON

Artwork and layout by Isaac Valentin

paperbeatscissors.com
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We acknowledge the financial support of FACTOR, the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage (Canada Music Fund) and of Canada’s Private Radio Broadcasters

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Paper Beat Scissors Montreal, Québec

Musical monstrosity deposited in Montreal, Quebec after the first years in Burnley, England.

Tim Crabtree’s haunting voice burns at the centre of the Paper Beat Scissors sound with an honesty and rawness that skirts discomfort. ... more

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Track Name: Gun Shy
As I saw it no-one called it
Breathe in, hold it, wash over, ignore it
Step back, shaken, voracious, I know

Fully loaded, too anxious to let go

Come down, see now
the rancour that pours out
Comfort is sought out in ways that bring us down
Reach for the wrong side, we’d hold it, but it’s gone

Fully loaded, too gun shy to let go

We look to them for wisdom, but they don’t know

Are all sides cut off?
No-one else to let go of
See now, all that comes off
When we pour out the venom we’ve known

Crawl out, can’t undermine, can’t fall in line, we’d fall apart

Fully loaded, fully empty of all heart
Track Name: All It Was
Seamless down to the core, it was the only way to look for a cause
Seen sideways, you know it was the making up of a storied paradise

Is that all it was?

Send a call out for a place in the soil, eyes glaze over
Sliding the stone back on where your ghost should be
“Tire me while you can, son”

That was all it was
It was all it was
Is that all it was?
It was all it was

As high as tired and caught in a fine mess, caught between your rules
Cling to virtue, but you cannot believe that you’re all that if you’re caught too
We’re here finely, but where we move next? To find you?
Calling it on and on…

Is that all it was?
Is that all it was?
Is that all it was?
It was all it was
Track Name: Don't Mind
Strong words, few deeds
Tell me what a friend should be
Go again: roll the dice
Show me where my heart should be

Nevermind if we see the day
When it comes it surely waits
Warm lights on the wall, is it too late?
Lift the cup, lift the plate

If you don’t mind

Big wounds in your small lives
Don’t mind me, I’m just saying goodnight
Bet you can’t tell what comes out of my mouth
Was it wizened pearls, was it turpentine?

But you don’t mind if you don’t mind
Track Name: Grace
Oh, my word – I would never act so calmly in the
face of the wreckage that you wrought

Storm upturned: the copper beech, the couches
Still we tell ourselves that nothing ever changed so much

I see it all
The grace that you hold

You send me out in the cold
All talk all told
As much as you’ll ever hold
Is it enough?

As infinite as sin, don’t ever cast a stone before you
all of us are fickle and unmoored

At least you’re not all the things you’re not
Could there be anything that you would rather hear less?

I see it all
The grace that you stole

You send me out in the cold
All talk all told
As much as you’ll ever hold, you send me out
You send me out in the cold
It’s not enough
Track Name: All We Know
All we know is wrong

Got ahead without words
At the flag from the start
It’s not as much as you’d like
but it’s more than enough

(thank you very much)

My conceit has been razed
And my folly has crumbled
You can leave when you like
The halls and the doors haven’t changed

Fine, only fine in the measliest sense
Pride in these misleading notions

All we know is wrong
Track Name: Shapes
You pull me into shapes that I can’t get out of

Less is more than you want it to be
Follow it down, there’s an end to this stream
Held aloft in the dying of spring
How to pretend that you don’t mean a thing?

You pull me into shapes that I can’t get out of

Stretched linen cloth, nothing stays without stain
Wait for the pull to get out into the rain
The pull never came, now the sky’s almost clear
Not laying blame for the fallowest years

I want it all
I want none

You pull me into shapes that I can’t get out of
Track Name: Better
And as their call went quiet into their sighs: to mess it up, is much better
And though your dominance would see it as trite, just wash it off, and get better

And did the Midas reach right into inside? ‘Ineffable’ would sound better
And from the calling ‘round to the way you got down, for all it is, it was better

And as the wall was rising, blank as their insides, you pulled it off, you made better
We saw the words appeared to form their own style are ours obliged to be better?

All that calcifies to hold him in place, and all of us could hold better
And you call it on so regular tired, and all of us, we need better

The thought is all too easy where it is now, to make it up, to write better
‘Cos we’re our poor relations too many times, we really ought to know better
Of all the golden sheets we make it between for all of us we know better
And each and every night, get sewn in the seams…

And wash it off, can’t wash it off…
Track Name: Half Awake
Does it mean something because it meant something?
Let it go for a while

But you watch it striving to see if it’s surviving
Make a pact: let it lie

More than half awake
Called only to say

You’re apart from feeling
Set adrift on meaning
Let it go for a while

But you won’t see it
Getting hard of hearing
Let it go, call it dying

More than half awake
Called only to say
It’s not enough to stay
If you won’t face the weight

Call it dying
Track Name: Little Sun
Start a flame, some little sun
Backs away for another one
Bend my little ear to it
Stanchioned either side

Bad as I was I didn’t know
You come around until you go
Stand out, stared out of your eyes
Back when all I got was fire

It is here and on again
Sad as it was, it wouldn’t go
Constant eye up in the yard
Much as it was not my fault


My heart

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