DISQ
DISQ:
Raina Bock: Bass Guitar, Vocals
Shannon Connor; Guitars, Keyboards, Vocals
Isaac de Broux-Slone: Guitars, Vocals
Brendan Manley: Drums
Logan Severson: Guitars, Vocals
All music and lyrics by Disq
Produced by Ron Schnapf, Isaac de Broux-Slone and Disq
Released March 6, 2020
I will never forget the very first time that I ever heard the music of Madison, WI's very own Disq.
Heading to their Bandcamp page and listening to their debut release entitled "Disq 1" (released July 11, 2016), I was instantly thunderstruck by the rich, textured, dynamic, psychedelic and astoundingly melodic musical wonderland that revealed itself during one incredible song after another and thus rewarded me with endless repeat listenings. It was an album that, to my ears, easily could battle toe-to-toe with any long established musical artists that I loved and the fact, that it was indeed created while they were high school students was staggering--considerably less to do with their respective ages but to the fact that their undeniably superior songwriting, production and instrumental abilities were so distinctly seasoned and therefore, professional.
The then duo of songwriter/bassist Raina Bock and songwriter/singer/multi-instrumentalist Isaac de Broux-Slone more than proved that they were already a musical force to be reckoned with and ever since, I have been left wondering and waiting to see where they could potentially head next.
In the time since "Disq 1," the band has signed to the Saddle Creek label, released an excellent double A sided single in "Communication b/w Parallel," (released January 25, 2019) and they have also now officially expanded its lineup from two to five members, now including friends and Madison, WI music veterans guitarist/keyboardist/singer Shannon Connor (of Post Social), drummer Brendan Manley (of Post Social, Dash Hounds and Squarewave) and guitarist/singer Logan Severson (of Lameena). And now, four years later, my wait is over and has been exquisitely rewarded with the arrival of the band's new album entitled "Collector."
Working as both an evolution and as a re-birth, Disq's "Collector" is a work that far exceeded any hopes that I could have ever held for it. The album not only delivers the goods in regards to its musical force and punch but due to the breadth of its emotional reach, which was unexpected in regards to the power the entire listening experience was received by me.
Simply stated, I was floored and even subjected to tears on that very first listen as well as raised goosebumps for every subsequent listen thereafter. It is a remarkable, beautiful, mature and thoughtful work while also joyfully performed with a restless yet controlled youthful abandon that comes with the exuberance of bashing around on instruments with your best friends. And what's more, Disq has weaved a thematically multi-layered album that is simultaneously person, universal and most crucially, decidedly more prescient than even the band could have ever anticipated.
"Collector" opens with a powerhouse in "Daily Routine," a song that feels as if it is an extension from the band's "All I Do Is Nothing" from "Disq 1." Yet, where that song felt like an anthem for teenage lethargy, "Daily Routine" is comparatively more urgent.
"This is my daily routine/Spend my hours on computer screen," begins de Broux-Slone over a wall of sound supplied by his bandmates. As the triple guitar attack by Connor, Severson and de Broux-Slone flies high and Bock and Manley's propulsive rhythm section booms, culminating in an enormous finish that revolves in growing speed and intensity before blowing itself apart in ashes, the lyrics convey a debilitating inertia. For the song's narrator, it is a life where he thought this existence "looked better inside a dream," wonders "what it's like to be feeling clean" and concludes with a self-described "cry for help" as he explains, "I'm in prison but I think this place was built by me."
"Daily Routine," an outstanding, roaring beginning to the album, succeeds triumphantly by accomplishing a feat very much akin to The Beatles "Help!" The song is an uncompromising rave-up, tailor made to being blasted from every open window possible and purely destined to whipping up live audiences into frenzies. It is also a melodic feast, unfolding over what feels to a a three part mini-suite. And the juxtaposition is first rate as the wild energy works in brilliant contrast to the lyrics, making what once may have felt like a certain victory has now succumbed into a certain emotional paralysis.
The ironically entitled "Konichiwa Internet" plunges deeper in the darker, and self-made, corners of life in social media where we all reside, "you in a cage, me in a cage." The societal paradox of feeling increasingly isolated and alienated in the medium designed to bring us together is superbly reflected in the music's loping, swaying pace which is twice spun on its head with a waltzing time signature twist fully evoking the magnetic push/pull nature that simultaneously attracts and repels us regarding the conflicts in our real and on-line lives.
With the opening admission of, "It gets much worse at times/When I feel like I'm fine/My eyes start going bright, I'm too restless to unwind," Shannon Connor steps up to the plate with the urgent, anxiety ridden "I'm Really Trying." Connor's first song for Disq, and on which he handles lead vocals, is a tightly wound punk rock scorcher. Filled with complex, intertwining guitars in triplicate (and not feeling too out of place from his work with Post Social), Connor leads Disq through a world of inner conflict where uncertainty, disquiet, and overall unease ping-pongs around the brain until it collapses, bringing the agitated and hook filled intensity of the album's first three songs to a close.
Allowing us to catch our collective breaths, the lovely "D19" relaxes the pace with its deceptively softer folk pop driven by terrific couplets that formulate a story that works on three different levels: an ode to a vintage microphone, a metaphor for a failed relationship or even a delicate warning of the emotional dangers when falling too deeply into nostalgia, as what was can really never be exactly the same again.
The first half of "Collector" concludes with the absolutely gorgeous "Loneliness," a power pop ballad that already sounds like a classic. Over lightly strummed acoustic guitars and the subtle sounds of backwards drums and cymbals, de Broux-Slone warmly intones, "I feel dead/Laying in my bead/Filling up with dread/Getting in my head/But somehow I stay." Confusion and angst leads to ennui and immobilization and as the band arrives in full bringing a veritable wave of melody, harmony vocals, a pitch-perfect outro of a guitar solo and an ear worm chorus that will stick as firmly as the strongest glue, Disq has emerged with a song that blissfully captures those moments when it inexplicably feels so very good to feel so very bad.
Side Two opens with "Fun Song 4," a sprightly post-rock instrumental that elicits waves and layers of hypnotic guitar patterns and rhythms merged with a bouncy pogo stick groove that dares you not to smile broadly as it lives up to its title and is reminiscent of a mid album Todd Rundgren instrumental confection.
The storm clouds return with the Weezer-esque guitar army of "Gentle," marking Logan Severson's entry to the band and on which he takes lead vocals. Propelled by the classic '90s styled loud-quiet-loud dynamics, Severson unfurls a semi-autobiographical tale depicting illness and a perpetual state of being unbalanced. "I think that my body gave a warning to me/When the blood wouldn't rush to my head," he sings. "But I've got a way to feel good/Stuck in the back of my mind/I've got a way to feel good/To burn out bright." Trying to hold oneself together even when it seems one's own body is working against them is the quandary that has no definitive answer yet Disq conveys the emotion with a combined force and grace.
After all of the mental noise, sometimes all you need is to find a copy of "The Beatles" a.k.a. "The White Album" (released November 22, 1968) to settle the spirit. As a counterpoint to "D19," we enter the acoustic Lennon-esque dream world of "Trash," as Isaac de Broux-Slone, with double tracked vocals and finger-picking that recalls The Beatles' "Julia," Disq takes a travel into the past for comfort, for understanding of the present, and for a sense of peace in desperate need but difficult to remember and retain.
.
And then, the noise returns...
"I Wanna Die" is the album's epic, a monolithic howl. With Raina Bock and Brendan Manley's insistent, creeping rhythm section setting the brooding, boiling tension, de Broux-Slone finds himself at a crucial crossroads where the psychological inertia of "Daily Routine" becomes too much to bear or comprehend.
"When I wake up, I want to go back to sleep
I can't decide if I'm a person or sheep
I just can't break my routine and I don't know if I want to
I can't confide in any one of my friends
Because I know it will lead into my end
I can't believe in anything that I think
and I wonder why...
...I wanna die"
With a riff that woud scare Black Sabbath and a firebomb of a guitar solo that would make Billy Corgan's jaw drop, Disq's "I Wanna Die" is their "Helter Skelter," a primal scream of a song that (again) demands to be played as loudly as possible and will pulverize you in a live setting.
As the stream of acoustic guitars emerge from the ashes a la The Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses," Disq concludes the album with the shattering "Drum In," a defining, definitive closing statement that brilliantly weaves in all of the album's themes and emotions into a melodic waterfall of a song. It made me cry for it pierced my heart so instantly and thoroughly.
It is a song that feels like an inner monologue or the very words one wishes they could say if they just had either the right person to say them or or the strength to voice them out loud. Isaac de Broux-Slone rich, warm vocals feel as if they are being lifted by the music of the full band, giving it just enough heft to speak. "I don't know how this all became," he recalls. "But every day I just feel so strange/Emptiness can fade away/ Emptiness still has its pain/Looking back on my worst days/I'd be shaking, wonder what is wrong/Now I wonder what's the first day/But now it's hopeless/I can't stop gagging."
As the song continues to flow, reaching its crescendo during which the world goes dark and de Broux-Slone intones that "I haven't eaten anything" and "I can't believe in everything," Disq gave me the feeling of soul sickness, a tender, empathetic plea into the void where one can only be saved by the warmth of one's friends and the music they can create together.
For an album that is designed to serve as a continuation and rebirth for the band, Disq's "Collector" is a stellar, top flight accomplishment. Working harmoniously with Producer Rob Schnapf (Elliot Smith, Beck, Guided By Voices, The Anniversary and more...), Disq emerges as a band so fully formed, multi-varied and utterly complete as "Collector" is seamlessly sequenced and unfolds with perfection. The band has clearly made the most of their shot with album making as not one moment is wasted and nothing is superfluous as every song is tightly constructed and performed to serve the song itself as best as possible.
Original members Isaac de Broux-Slone and Raina Bock only re-confirm the rightfulness of their union while newer members Shannon Connor, Brendan Manley and Logan Severson fit into, and therefore expand, the already established aesthetic like the proverbial glove. You hear the work of a team, collaboration in full effect, all egos checked at the door and that is if there were any around to discard in the first place. You feel the camaraderie and the genuine affection between all five members, which makes the songs and, the combined lyrical voices, stand even stronger.
While the album cover and inner photo shots clearly evokes The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" (released May 16, 1966), and there are the aforementioned musical nods to The Beatles and Black Sabbath plus quite a number of musical references that are wide and varied enough to spark attention to different generational demographics (what may be Saves The Day to one may be Paul Westerberg or Big Star to another), Disq has artfully not created a spot-the-reference album.
In fact, and despite whatever touchstones we may hear and detect, the band firmly sounds like no one else other than themselves, which is indeed a staple of the Madison music community. But with the considerably wider reach that "Collector" has already attracted and received, listeners will be able to experience this considerable feat for themselves for potentially the very first time...and it is remarkable indeed.
Yet in addition to everything else that I have mentioned, what makes "Collector" excel is indeed the emotional reach of the album, which does indeed feel like it has miraculously touched the pinpoint of what it means to grow up in our 21st century American society, a world which has grown exceedingly unstable and vitriolic, more enraged and less empathetic.
The act of growing up contains its own set of growing pains that are recognizable to any generation as we are all attempting ways to experience self-discovery in a judgmental, obstacle filled world that discourages self-expression, individuality and even integrity itself. Yet, to grow up now, with the vortex of social media, more societal noise, the increasing absence of nuance and even truth...let's just say I am happy to not be 20 years old in 2020 and that I grew up when I did.
Disq's "Collector" is the sound of five young adults attempting to navigate a harsher, more anxiety driven world than ones in our relatively recent pasts but all of them carrying varying loads within heavy backpacks of individual anxieties, mental illnesses and depression and other ailments that are invisible to the eye but as real as a visible open wound. Their nerve endings are exposed and by showing theirs, we recognize ours while also feeling unquestionable empathy.
The fact that the album has arrived in the world for all to hear just as a global pandemic unleashed itself, this new reality has made the album more than prevalent, as the narratives displayed through the album, especially the ones concerning an individualistic spiritual ache, are now societal, adding a greater weight to its impact.
And yet, the overall experience is not distressing even with such internally difficult material. In fact, the experience of Disq's "Collector" is very much like the scenario presented in the band's own music video for "Loneliness," in which we find a shivering Isaac de Broux-Slone, alone in a snowstorm, ventures by snowmobile to a gig with his bandmates, who perform to a disinterested and hostile older crowd, only to have the lights turned off on them. Disq soldiers on, eventually winning over the crowd and the band exits victorious, all sharing the same snowmobile, riding into the cold, winter night in smiles.
That is what Disq's "Collector" felt like to me. Five friends banded together in friendship and music, huddled together and holding each other tightly in a severely uncertain world. For in a cold world growing colder, where would we be without our friends to be there to hold us upright when life feels too overwhelming and unforgivably dark? May this album help us light the way.
Disq's "Collector" is far and away one of the best albums of 2020.
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