Why is Descartes A Kant’s Paper Dolls on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
It’s kind of weird and disturbing and great. Come take the trip.
What does Descartes A Kant’s Paper Dolls mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
So, there have been some pretty… out there entries on this here best 1,000 albums ever list already, I’ll freely admit. To whit:
- #996 – Doc Heller – Terribly Mysterious: The Goat Boy Origins
- #978 – Brainiac – Hissing Prigs In Static Couture
Paper Dolls goes next level, for good and for weird. But its highs are really exciting and well worth checking out.
And that’s the beauty of having an expansive canvass of 1,000 entries – it allows “room” for worthy comers from odd-bizarro corners of the musical spectrum.
Paper Dolls is an experimental album on multiple fronts. The songs are typically less than two minutes (save for “Ladies Coat,” which comes in at 2:50), and absolutely lack any kind of traditional verse-chorus structure. While there are vocals – and often surprisingly sweet and crooning female vocals, at that – they play backdrop to some of the zanier instrumental explorations you’ve heard.
Taking all of that into account, “Hello Tarantino” as song title works really well as there are sections of the track that speak to the iconic film director’s wildly eclectic use of music in his movies. There’s some surf rock-ish stuff going on, and then there’s kind of a Ritchie Valens-esque interlude, there’s the sweet and crooning female vocals that I mentioned, some lounge-organ vibes, some rockabilly-meets-punk stuff, and then there’s some screechy noise rock going on. All in two minutes.
So that’s a description of a journey through just one of this album’s songs.
“Antidoll” is a nod and a wink to Hole and Courtney Love, maybe? It starts off like a Live Through This B Side track in the process of going off the rails, and then catapults off those rails into some thrash metal that would make The Distillers happy.
The first 30 seconds or so of “Babossa Nova” are kind of straight ahead bossa nova-influenced rock, before venturing into stranger, moodier territory. But if you really can’t stand screechy, art/noise rocking stuff (which I get and can sympathize with), this is one to start with. Except for the final 30 seconds, that is!
Pop culture stuff that’s somehow related to Descartes A Kant’s Paper Dolls
I think I paid around three dollars to see Reservoir Dogs for the first time at an on campus screening in a lecture hall when I was in college. It was the perfect movie going experience not only because I saw what would become one of my favorite movies, and not only had I never really seen anything like Reservoir Dogs before, but I knew almost nothing about the movie or Quentin Tarantino before having seen it.
In a few short years, the dialog of both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction became deeply ingrained in the vocabulary and conversations I had with many of my friends.
After seeing the brilliant Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood a few years ago, I ranked Tarantino’s films from most to least favorite. I’m still pretty happy with the list.
1. Pulp Fiction
2. Inglourious Basterds
3. Reservoir Dogs
4. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
5. Django Unchained
6. Jackie Brown
7. Death Proof
8/9. Kill Bill (Vols. 1 & 2)
10. The Hateful Eight
The only one I genuinely didn’t care for – you might even say I hated it – was The Hateful Eight. I’ll have to give it another go sometime and see if the verdict stands. I love that he keeps evolving, experimenting, and showing new angles over the years while always remaining deeply true to his take on the world and on filmmaking.
Tarantino has been making the rounds on podcasts of late to promote his novelization of Once Upon a Time… (another off the wall yet on point endeavor!), and I find his interviews to be nearly as riveting as his films. I highly recommend his appearance on Brian Koppelman’s podcast, The Moment.
Some stats & info about Descartes A Kant – Paper Dolls
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Experimental Rock, Punk, Punk Rock, Thrash Metal, Rock, Alternative Pop, Alternative Rock, Noise Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – not rated!
- When was Paper Dolls released? 2006
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #967 out of 1,000
Descartes A Kant’s Paper Dolls on Spotify
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective take on what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.