Written by: Dave Cantrell
So often in life something will hit you like an antidote to a condition you weren’t even fully aware you were suffering from. An out-of-nowhere phone call from an old pal you’d thought had maybe forgotten you that bounces you out of a cloud of self-pity that, you realize, had been slowly enveloping you for months. An off-the-cuff remark by a co-worker that boosts your spirits that up until that moment didn’t feel they needed boosting. That sort of thing, the little blip on the ‘daily routine’ screen that almost unaccountably leads to one thinking ‘Huh. Y’know what? This being alive business ain’t too bad after all.’ Such was the effect when this latest track from Paper Idol – known to his mates as Matan KG – popped up in my email like an injection of pop effervescence (poppervescence? Can we call it that? Yes, let’s!) into the drudgery bloodstream of daily digital life.
Irreverent but ever-so-relevant, “Seen This All Before” is an anti-love song arranged and sung with all the easy-going zest of an actual love song, the jadedness inherent in its title subsumed by the near giddy jauntiness with which it’s presented. Not entirely a surprise, coming as it does on the heels of the insidiously catchy “James Bond” single a month ago (not to mention the woozy charm of “Tightrope” back in February), it’s nonetheless very heartening indeed to know that there’s nothing ‘one off’ about this Paper Idol kid. This too makes eminent sense when you find out that Mr. KG is carrying around a degree in neuroscience in his back pocket. Talent, of many colors, it would seem, is pulsing in no short supply throughout the guy’s own nervous system. To some extent this also helps explain the pointedly oblique intelligence that burbles through Paper Idol’s work, resulting in that all-too-uncommon entity, a dancey zingy bright-as-the-summer-sun-in-LA pop song that also, rather inescapably, leaves you thinking about shit. It’s almost, dare we say, what might be called ‘escapist escapism,’ which, if you ask us, ain’t nothin’ but damned cool.
Whatever the case and however I choose to frame it here for you, there’s little doubt that the essence of the thing itself will arrive in your ears in much the same fashion as it did mine, thereby having a similar effect as alluded to up there at the outset. This is because the track has that irreducible – and rare – quality of being infectious as fck which in turn takes it automatically into the realm of the universal. Resisting this single is akin to stifling laughter or deciding not to feel a jolt of joy that life has unexpectedly thrown your way. Don’t do that. Give in. You will be rewarded, we promise you. [“Seen This All Before” will feature on the Mania Days EP out June 25th]
