Hey there. New to 2026? Welcome to Jerry Paper’s “New Year’s Day.” It’s as good a place as many to land on today and certainly better than some others. Who’s Jerry Paper? That’s a tougher question that you might think. Dig back in his ten plus years of material and you’ll find a host of recordings that sound like an art school installation sponsored by Moog. In fact, Jerry Paper is more a what than a who. Lucas Nathan is the brains of the organization – writer, performer, otherworldly bon vivant. Or is he? Early recordings pleaded for sales to ‘keep Jerry’s host body alive.’ So maybe Jerry’s in charge of Lucas but keeps him alive and in the credits for tax purposes? All of which is to say that Jerry or Lucas or whomever is running this show is weird. Wonderfully, creatively weird. And I mean that in a good way. The weird of this world push boundaries, tread on the stand-offish, and create space for the rest of us to defy conformity just a little bit more than we’re comfortable with.

I caught up with the Jerry Paper project on the 2022 album Free Time which featured his first really great guitar-heavy number “Kno Me.” Even on that record his basic stylistic default was more jazz meets lounge, perhaps with Donald Fagan and Frank Zappa as consultants. Yet “Kno Me” has a 1979 new wave-ish rock feel. His most recent LP is 2024’s Inbetweezer and it carries on playing with recognizable song forms in what may be his most accessible collection yet. But I digress. We come to this recent record because it is the host of our seasonal single, “New Year’s Day.” I’m loving the aural chaos that launches this track. It sounds chopped up and put back together but the song’s strong hook somehow survives. The chorus bops along, threatening to become a singalong at any moment. Ok, the ending is a bit tortuous-sounding but what new year song shouldn’t have some dread lurking in the fine print? Gotta take the goof with the rumble, no-one ever said.

Given where we’ve been and what we’ve seen these last few years, lets dispense with the unrealistic wishes for peace and normalcy. Shit’s probably coming. Let’s just enjoy this moment with Jerry.