Paperwork, Parts and Labor

How do you feel about your day job? Yeah, I thought so. The Austin band Paperwork makes a musical dissection of the dull anguish felt by so many in cube farms across the world. Just peer over the cube at your huddled-over co-worker, working away their adult life — clacking on the keyboard, shuffling paper, emailing, and someday retiring with a grand retirement party at the local buffet restaurant. What happened to those dreams, man? (Side note: I always love those Bring Your Kid to Work Days, watching high schoolers find out how boring their parents’ jobs are. Aren’t those days supposed to inspire kids?)

Well, the band Paperwork is hanging onto their dreams, working away at the day job just to get a chance to create some music in their off hours. Paperwork’s debut full-length, Parts and Labor, plots the band’s revolt against the nine-to-five-grind while commiserating in the harsh reality of it. The music is standard alt-indie-rock fare but very calculated, with no loose ends or reckless noise. The vocals are well done by both of the band’s primary singers, and there are some nice mathy beats and rhythms, as well. I guess you could call it post-college rock; err, um, grad-school rock with lyrics to get you thinking a bit.

Take the song “Company Man,” for example; Paperwork sings, “Put away your childish things / Isn’t it enough to have had a dream?”, and then they end the song with, “I’m giving in / I’m not giving up.” On the track “Accts Receivable,” however, there’s a hopelessness: “I blink away days at a time / Waking dreams by fluorescent light.” And the disc goes on like that, one song getting discouraged by what seems like just wasted time (“Buried in Layers”) and then the next song revving up the energy and not allowing the day job to be all that defines you (“Part and Parcel”)…check out Paperwork if you find yourself thinking about such things.