After a 12-year run as one of the most exciting bands to ever spring from Dallas, The Paper Chase announced this spring that they'd be going on an indefinite hiatus. Makes sense: Keys man Sean Kirkpatrick bolted the band in 2010 to focus on his own act, Nervous Curtains; original drummer Aryn Dalton left some time prior to focus on his Buscar Bronca project; Dalton's replacement, Jason Garner, when not serving as the Old 97's road manager, has been finding work in both the Polyphonic Spree and Tim DeLaughter's new other band, Preteen Zenith; bassist Bobby Weaver has been focusing on being a single dad; and frontman and principal songwriter John Congleton's been plenty busy producing acclaimed albums for the likes of The Walkmen and St. Vincent.
But Congleton couldn't avoid scratching his itch for penning his own songs and vigorously performing them live for long. Almost immediately after word of The Paper Chase's hiatus broke, so too did word of Congleton's next project, The Nighty Nite, which, in addition to boasting Garner again on drums, also features members of Shearwater, Hospital Ships, and Wires Under Tension. The band's debut EP, Dimples, due out on Graveface Records on June 21, sounds very much like The Paper Chase 2.0—dark, ominous, epic, angular and shrill. Congleton concedes as much: The EP, he says, is essentially filled with Paper Chase holdovers.
There are, however, some differences—namely in the live show, which Congleton describes as "a non-traditional rock set-up" while refusing to go into further detail. Knowing him, though, an engaging offering seems a given. And, on this bill, it better be: True Widow, fresh off an East Coast tour opening for Surfer Blood and ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, headline; Joey Kendall, the mastermind behind Mount Righteous, opens.
