What is the final boss of Boston, Massachusetts? A cantankerous Dunkin’ employee, closing your favorite location an hour early? A duck boat filled to the brim with Yankees fans, ascending from the murky depths of the Charles River?
That’s what the stereotypes might have you believe. But a real Bostonian knows — the truest test of mettle is battling the city’s landlords and realtors. It was roughly this time last year when Paper Lady huddled under the media tent at Boston Calling, dishing with us about those same menaces to society via their song “Joe Modern.” When performing at the festival’s Orange Stage, the Boston group had teased the then-unreleased tune.
“One of [the songs] is about our realtor that we were working with when we were looking at houses and he’s just like, the worst, so we wrote this song about him,” said vocalist Alli Raina. “I feel like our Boston people will understand that — the frustration of working with a realtor.”
Now, one spring later, “Joe Modern” has arrived as a precursor to Paper Lady’s debut full-length album Idle Fate, due out May 9. The song and its accompanying video employs jumpy post-punk to deliver its titular sleazebag a reality check: “Your wife wants to kill you / She isn’t alone” Raina sings, after bemoaning “This place is a shit hole / You lied to my face.”
“We kept joking that we should write a song about this guy — and then Rowan brought this wild guitar riff to rehearsal, and the rest just fell into place,” Raina added upon the song’s release. “The lyrics came to me instantly. It’s the most fun song to play live, and I think it helped us evolve our sound in a huge way.”
Tune in below.
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