Stream: PAPA, ‘Everything Takes an Accident’

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PAPA (Photo by Travis Schneider)

Singer-songwriter and drummer Darren Weiss has bootstrapped his way through the indie scene for almost two decades, and besides gigs behind the kit (Lana Del Rey, Sky Ferreira, Perfume Genius, Miya Folick and Albert Hammond Jr. have been employers), he’s been the driving force behind the indie-soul outfit PAPA.

After an EP (2011) and two albums (2013, ’17), Weiss put PAPA on the shelf in 2017 after he and co-founder Daniel Presant amicably parted ways. After the brief solo project Monastereo (2019), Weiss has officially rebooted PAPA, announcing last week that a new album, “Dig Yourself or Dig a Hole,” would be out Oct. 13.

“Sometime over the pandemic, I found a folder of unfinished PAPA songs that I’d completely forgotten about,” Weiss says. “I was really excited by a lot of what I’d heard. It felt like PAPA, it didn’t feel like material I could use in the project I was working on at the time.

“The album is called ‘Dig Yourself Or Dig A Hole,’ which, to me, means that you have to be the person who invents the world for a person like you to live in. Find a way to find yourself there, or you might as well start digging a grave. This album is one of the places I had to invent to find myself on a map.”

Though Presant is absent (except for having co-written the track “Simple Life”), the roster of collaborators and players backing Weiss and his fulsome croon on “Dig Yourself” is formidable. Among them are Michael Shuman (QOTSA, Mini Mansions), Zachary Dawes (Lana Del Rey, Mini Mansions, The Last Shadow Puppets), Brad Oberhofer, Joey Waronker, Tyler Cash (Devendra Banhart), Alex Casnoff (Harriet), Ben Babbitt (Angel Olsen, Weyes Blood), Taylor Locke and producer-engineer-mixer Sean Cook.

After releasing “Barcelona” in May, PAPA returned last week with the album’s lead track, “Everything Takes an Accident.”

“The fact is all things are forever changing, and what a missed opportunity it is to let your certainty get in the way of seeing what’s happening around you,” Weiss says. “The Bible? State lines? These things were drawn up by men. So give me a pencil.”

||| Stream: “Everything Takes an Accident”

||| Live: PAPA opens for Sorcha Richardson on Nov. 5 at the Echo. Tickets.

||| Previously: “Barcelona,” Live at Zebulon, Interview (Monastereo), Live at the Bootleg, “Comfort’s a Killer,” “Hold On,” Live at the Roxy, “I’m Sorry” (and a bunch more), “If the Moon Rises,” “Young Rut,” “If You’re My Girl, Then I’m Your Man,” “Put Me to Work,” “Ain’t It So,” “I’m the Lion King,” Popular with Us: Our Favorite Local Albums of 2013, live at the El Rey Theatre, live at the Troubadour, Interview (2012)