An Interview with Luís of Paper Native
The NJ alt-rocker talks new EP, best Radiohead album, anime & more.
Paper Native are dedicated students of the Loud-Soft-Loud school of Alternative. Chicanx singer, songwriter and guitarist Luís Vera leads drummer John Kelly-Keifer and bassist Tony Melograno in distorted and acoustic tracks alike, discussing power constructs, escapism, and alienation. The band released their first EP, Sunhaüs, this past May. I talked with Luís about how they got into music, the importance of dynamics, what anime to binge-watch during a pandemic, and more.
How did you start playing music?
When I was in 4th grade I walked into the band room while they were having rehearsal. I talked to this nice young lady in the class playing trombone. I was like “Whoa your instrument says ‘Jupiter!’ That’s a planet!” And for some reason that was enough for me to want to play trombone. Then I went to a special school where they made me play a string instrument. I asked the professor if I could learn guitar and he said “No! Cello.” I played that for three years. I got a new teacher who was super into rock music. He was feeding me The Beatles and I picked up guitar and was pretending I could be George Harrison.
Aren’t we all?
Yeah [laughs]. In high school, our strings teacher was also the marching band teacher. He asked me to go from playing small bass to electric bass for the marching band. That’s when I really started to play and formed my first band. I hit college and it became more serious cuz college is like, “Time to learn jazz!” and I just wanted to learn how to play bass. Don’t get me wrong, Coltrane is super cool, but white jazz bro culture is…[groans]. I don’t care for it; I don’t care about being the most technical. So I started playing in bands and writing music on my own.
You just released your EP, Sunhaüs. What was the recording process like?
I wish [Sunhaüs engineer] Tanner was here. His reaction would just be: “It was hell. I don’t ever want to do this again.” We agreed to record for his capstone project and spent the first 3 months of the semester writing songs. We didn’t really have the time to figure out which songs were the best ones or which ones sucked or how we wanted to do a song. It was just like gig, gig, gig and then do this recording session because it’s the one day out of the week when all our schedules line up. It went from “Oh, we’ll get this done in like, 2 months, 3 months” to taking 6 months to finish 4 songs.
I feel like that’s the constant struggle for college bands: juggling everyday life responsibilities, school and music. So you recorded everything yourselves at school?
Yeah, Tanner Freeman took care of all the tracking. It was this big process where we kept having to go back and do dubs. We managed to grind it out and release “Sow” as a single. Me and Tanner had never mastered before. He’s a live sound person and I’m a studio rat, only mixing really. When we were mastering the single, I kid you not, 5 days in a row I was going into the studio for 8 to 10 hours and after 65 million bounces we were like this is the one, fuck it, move on. For the EP we just barely finished tracking when Tanner left the state to go to Ohio. When he left, Covid hit and he was trapped there for two weeks. School was closed and we didn’t have any of our files. We asked our professor to send us all of our sessions and I wound up mixing at home. Mike Parisi was a saint and mastered it for us in a week.
One of my favorite tracks from the EP is “Cut Me Down.” It’s really politically and personally charged. Could you talk a little bit about that song?
That song was originally played in another project I wrote for. When I used to sing it then, it was about a personal relationship I had with someone that was a very abusive; there was a lot of undermining and feeling like you were getting cut down. I brought it to Paper Native and as much as I felt strongly for it, the emotions I felt towards the person it was about were similar to how I was feeling about societal structures. The chorus stayed the same. It’s a reference to one of the last stories of the Aztec empire, the story of Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor. He and a servant of his were burned alive by the Spanish, but he didn’t show any emotions. His servant was like “Hey, aren’t you feeling anything?” and he replied, “What are you talking about? I’m lying in a bed of roses.” So, the line in the chorus “Put me up into your burning pyre” is like you have to sit in the flames of everything and exist regardless of how much it sucks. It’s more of a challenge than just lying there. The lyrical content of the first verse is about the Walmart Shooter who said, “I’m here to kill Mexicans.” And the second verse is about classism, and how people are out here to drain you of anything that makes you happy or any chance you have at stepping up. Nobody wants any of these things, everyone just wants to live as themselves and not be forced to live in the fire. The song is expressing that frustration and punching it out.
I hear a lot of different influences on the EP. In “Sunhaüs” I hear The Strokes, and in “Sow” I hear Incubus in the technical riffs and echo effects on vocals. What bands and artists inspire your music?
I always have a hard time describing our music to people because what I like is very different from what I think we sound like. It’s very interesting you say Incubus because I really like A Crow Left of the Murder…. I remember there was a time period where I listened to that a lot but haven’t thought about it in a while.
Even if you don’t think you sound like it, things you like come through, reimagined in your own way. I’d say you guys sound like a 90s/00s alternative band.
I’d like to think we’re like the bastard child of The White Stripes, At the Drive In, and I want to lie to myself and say Nirvana.
There’s totally that grunge influence there.
I say 90s alt but I get closer and closer to saying grunge. This band is definitely influenced by Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana (unplugged, specifically in songs like “Orange Tree”) and the use of simplicity and dynamics of The Pixies. As far as artists go that I’m like, this is like the pantheon, the people whose tricks I’m trying to steal, The Strokes are one. I’ve listened to Is This It? and First Impressions of Earth way too much. My lazier vocal deliveries are like the Julian thing. Radiohead is a big one, too. I’m of the unpopular cult that likes The Bends.
That’s my favorite Radiohead album!
THANK YOU. I love that record. I really want those quiet, close moments like “Fake Plastic Trees” that feel heavy and the loud moments for cutting loose like “Just.”
It’s a powerful and important use of dynamics in their songs and albums. You definitely make use of it in your songs, too.
I also really like The Clash and Green Day, but specifically when those bands are like this is punk, but there’s another aspect to it. There’s one band called Enjambre, they’re literally the Mexican Strokes. Caifanes one of the biggest bands in Mexico. They started off as a new wave project. My friend showed me them in high school and they influenced my guitar playing in a lot of ways in their riff work. There’s this Latinx band from California I’m listening to at the moment whose singer is like a perfect cross between Morrissey and Danzig, they’re called The Tracks. They’re really different; I’d love to be in California because the Chicanx and Latinx scene over there is full of great bands.
Okay fun question: anime recommendations? I know you’ve been watching anime during quarantine.
Don’t expose me! I’m a small-time anime watcher but a big-time manga reader. I’ll tear through it even if nothing’s happened in 200 chapters. Anime’s got to grab me right away. I’ve been watching stuff on Webtoons; they’re now a worldwide app but when I found them they were really small for creators to make their own comics. A lot of them are being turned into anime in Korea on Crunchyroll. Tower of God is one of them; it’s crazy, subs or dubs. The other one is called God of High School. And for the classics, of course if you like jazz you’ve gotta watch Cowboy Bebop. The voice acting is so good, and the music is good. Yu Yu Hakusho is one of my favorites. I wish I could recommend a Shōnen Jump but like honestly, it’s not worth it. Naruto Shippuden is literally a year’s worth of filler.
Keep up with Paper Native on Instagram & Twitter. Purchase & stream Sunhaüs on Bandcamp & Spotify.
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Images courtesy of Maxxed Photo