I've been wanting to catch up with Paper Citizen for a few months now. The band is the brainchild of Singaporean Claire Gohst. I had previously circled a date at The Escondite in January, but the night got cancelled due to the Los Angeles fires. Fast forward three months and I noticed that she was playing another show at The Escondite. This time, there was no interference to my getting to catch a set other than a rather bad accident on the southbound 2 freeway, which resulted in a less than 30 minute trip turning into a 1 hour torture drive.
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| Paper Citizen at The Escondite |
I first came across Paper Citizen in 2022 at The Echo. She was part of the Out of Mind Festival that celebrated the LGBTQ community of Los Angeles. The festival was packed with favorites of mine: Beginners, Ramonda Hammer, Spare Parts for Broken Hearts, and VAVÁ. That was one stacked line-up. Gohst actually did double duty for the night, fronting her own band as well as playing back-up for Stevi Daft. I covered the night for Buzzbands. If you want to see my photos and review of the night you can click on this link.
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| Paper Citizen at The Escondite |
I will admit that my first reaction when I arrived at The Escondite and seeing Gohst's band setting up was trying to reach back into my music memory and place the drummer. I kept thinking, I've seen this drummer before in another band? Of course, while working on this blog post, I had to do some digging around. The drummer is Sarah Midori and after scanning through her Instagram page, I figured it out. She played drums once for Melinda West's band Sugar Rum Tantrum at The Satellite (a favorite venue that never reopened after the 2020 shutdown). Curiosity resolved.
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| Paper Citizen at The Escondite |
Paper Citizen played a 9 song set that included a Kate Bush cover, which covered the bases of my love for 80s/90s music. The remaining songs were evenly split between released and unreleased music. She mentioned of this, "Some new ones here. Still working it out. Making things difficult for myself." For me, that's one of the cooler reasons to head out to these small venues. Musicians often use it to experiment with new music: I suppose trying to determine which songs they think audiences enjoy and which ones might need to get tossed.
An example of one her new songs was "Station." The song highlights Gohst's ability to build cool guitar rifts into her songs. One of her released songs was "American Song." It was her patriotic song that she introduced by saying that even though America has some problems now, there are still great things about America -- such as our music.
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| Paper Citizen at The Escondite |
Her song "Heart On Fire" was for her OG fans. It was obvious that she was very comfortable playing the song. With a smile, she aggressively attacked her guitar, taking on a rock star guitar stance.
Over my head with this burning desireHeart on fire
And when you're near you set my heart on fire
Setlist: Hands Dirty, Station, Strange, SHKN, American Song, Defuse, Running Up That Hill (Kate Bush cover), Elemental, Heart On Fire.
Paper Citizen will be hitting up The Escondite once again on June 11th.
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