You’re probably thinking that, for a Gallic band, Papier Tigre’s French is rubbish. After all, ‘Papier Tigre’ makes no sense at all. “We thought everyone was going to joke [about our name]. We thought it sounded funny,” says Eric Pasquereau, guitarist and frontman for the Nantes trio. “It’s probably the only French thing that we have, so we’ve got to keep it.”

Indeed, it would be a stretch to say that this noisy-pop outfit, consisting of Pasquereau, Pierre-Antoine Parois, and Arthur de La Grandiere, sound French. Drawing heavily on old school indie rockers like Nirvana, Fugazi, The Jesus Lizard, and Sonic Youth, the childhood mates have cultivated their math-rock sound and improvised rhythmic lyrics (Pasquereau calls it “sound writing”) over two albums: the first recorded in Pasquereau’s parents’ home; the second, the more polished, Iain Burgess-produced album The Beginning and End of Now, an occasionally-political diatribe on the immediateness of everything in the modern day, due for its Chinese release in December.
Although only now set for its China release, The Beginning and End hit European shelves more than a year ago. In the meantime, Papier Tigre have toured several continents and started crafting new tunes for their upcoming return to China. So what will they be playing? Says Pasquereau: “The songs that we’re going to play in China are a bit more poppy than the stuff we did before. Maybe it’s just natural that we come down and have less to complain about.”

Mark Tjhung

Papier Tigre play Hidden Agenda on November 29.