A band will tout an affinity for shoegaze noise rock, loaded with garage tendencies, and I’ll take an immediate interest. Since the early days of Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth, I’ve been enthralled with dissonant tremolos and howling guitars.
What can I say, I’m a sucker for feedback.
Coming across Chicago’s Disappears was fortuitous then, as it proudly exhibits all these elements I crave. Up until last year the band even boasted Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley as a member of its touring crew, further proof of its worth. So when the opportunity to review Disappears newest work Kone presented itself, I charged.
Retreat, as it were, was the sensible choice.
The two-song EP (three if you count an edit of the first song as another track) is a 20-minute litany of banging and moaning, which is great for the bedroom but torture through stereo speakers. Am I supposed to think this is intriguing, that it matters? Shelley reportedly left the band citing scheduling conflicts, but perhaps he just has excellent timing.
The title track, which is nearly 16 minutes in regular form but 10 minutes once edited, opens with a slow, quiet rise of feedback eventually joined by a redundant rhythmic drumming. A guitar joins the fray six minutes in, and a minute later singer Brian Case utters non-sensical words through an echo-chamber. It sounds like a man on Novocaine trying to sing after having major dental surgery. Spit in the cup man, you’re getting saliva all over the place. After several minutes of this nonsense, the sounds dissipate one by one, about a minute, or 10, too late.
The other song, “Kontakt’, enters in media res, wearing a bit more bite than its long-winded predecessor. The growling undercurrent has weight until Case starts to babble once again, and I swear it sounds like he’s singing a garbled version of “The Safety Dance’. No, I’m not trying to be funny, that’s what it sounds like. Men Without Hats, take notice – you have a fan in Chicago.
But not one here, I can be a sucker for only so long.
