By Mykhailo Vil’yamson
Ever wonder what you would get if you folded a piece of paper twice and then cut the creased lines? Me neither. But maybe I’ll do it sometime and make a pamphlet from those four double-sided pages about how much I dig Fold Paper’s debut EP 4TO. Until then, you’ll have to settle for what’s written here.
While the single “Medical Jargon” was the first to be released back in March 2023 – which reminded me of early Bloc Party material – frontperson Chell Osuntade (who people might know as the bassist from Julien’s Daughter) brought things in a different direction with these four songs. Self-described as a “post-punk wannabe,” this is an apt categorization for the band and functions well for what dropped on July 12th of this year. Exploring themes of personal frustration, duplicity, social critique and family history, the sound matches the content: it’s multilayered and complex.
It begins in a haze of lo-fi – guitar feedback coupled with a keen, repeating drumline whose tone becomes progressively clear and dialed-in. The subsequent two minutes of “End Zone” before vocals come in provide listeners with a taster of what to expect…it’s playful and stratified; navigating dissonance and beauty. There’s ample delay used in this first track as well as some variations in tempo, and it bleeds right into the second song “Idle Idle.” A post-punk revival spirit really shines through in this one, with gnarly guitars, hard-hitting beats, and sharp jabs at human fickleness and status quo clichéd mores. As for “Nothing to Report,” lots of sarcasm regarding expectations and “measuring up” to others – reinforced by some audio instructions from the dreaded aerobic capacity “Beep Test.” Steady bass and drums throughout, matched with querulous electric noise. There’s also a sweet music video for this first single, where we see Osuntade alongside some other familiar YWG musicians. And this brings us to “Come Down Awkward,” which seems to be a critique directed to a particular person (or type of individual); perhaps related to a fall from grace? Unsure. But the way that stream-of-consciousness-like lyrics intermingle with instrumentation that disintegrates and gets reconstructed is absolutely worth a listen.Fold Paper is Chell Osuntade (vocals, guitar, bass), Brendyn Funk (guitar), and Rob Gardiner (drums). It’s also notable that all of the songs on 4TO are over four minutes in length each, which is increasingly less common these days…so this is especially nice to hear.