Papier Tigre – The Screw

Riveting Nantes trio Papier Tigre have been pedaling their post-hardcore chops for ten years now, and from Fugazi to Faraquet, their fourth album feeds on the cerebral twitches of latter-day Dischord Records with gusto. There’s a serrated funk that props up their gleeful caterwauling, and a hella good time it is too – in a clenched-teeth sorta way.

Mood Trials catches ‘em at their most tense, with Eric Pasquereau’s wiry bon mots taking root in an addictively spacious groove, while elsewhere they wrench fearsome scree from their guitars and tease us with electro-pop synthery amidst undulating disco-ball spasms. On centerpiece A Matter of Minutes, a mechanistic, single-note beat flickers like flames in a gale over the course of nine challenging minutes. In fact, so dizzying are the twists and turns of The Screw that it seems a shame to tie it down to mere genre: ‘excellent’ does the job just as well.