The phrase "living life in the fast lane" has always seemed to me to be one of those trite examples of yuppie self-satisfaction, used by dickheads who think it makes them sound dynamic and exciting when really it's just an excuse for an inability - bordering on ADHD - to sit still for three seconds and/or an horrendously overbearing cocaine habit. But for a long time now, I've had the impression that life does indeed seem to be speeding up. Scientifically speaking, this is nonsense. A minute today is just as long as a minute fifty years ago. But in recent times, speed has become everything. And the faster, the better. Fast food. Speed dating (and indeed mating). High-speed broadband. Up-to-the-second news updates. Mortgages in fifteen minutes. Christ, some websites even offer a divorce in the time it takes me to take a shower in the morning.
In a society and, more pertinently, in a music industry where immediacy has become almost the only way to survive, it's still not that often that the release of a debut album also marks the demise of a band. But that's just the case for Australian guitar group The Disguise. Of course, things aren't quite that neat, but the unfortunate novelty of a band disappearing into the ether just as its music is in theory starting to blossom, is intriguing, albeit a little dispiriting.
Closer inspection reveals however a slightly more nuanced story. The band has been plugging away on their local Perth scene for over five years. Live dates and a demo CD have come and gone, so much like a best-of that enshrines a band's output for posterity, "Fly Close To The Ground" takes on a posthumous quality that not only has to introduce the individuals, but wave goodbye to them as well. It is perhaps appropriate then that The Disguise's brand of music belongs resolutely to a different time. Indeed, by their own admittance, they draw from "the sounds and ideals of mid 90s post punk". What this means in practice is a ten-track collection of melodic pop, at times gentle, at times a little surprising, and on the whole entirely listenable.
Their new (and as it happens final) single, "Shipyard", leads the way, all dynamic chiming guitars, shimmering harmonics, and delightfully breathy female vocals from bassist Ash Hendriks. In mood they're startling reminiscent of Canadian popsters Paper Moon, who despite a lack of fancy haircuts and celebrity partners, have succeeded in producing album after album of intricate, intelligent pop music. That "Fly Close To The Ground" demonstrates the similarly canny ability to craft an articulate pop song suggests that the music world would do well to hold onto these guys, despite the band's dissolution.
|
And that's not to say that they can't pull out a curve-ball when they want to either. Rambling prog-pop "Frozen Faces" may open rhythmically mid-tempo, but it's soon swirling around like a slowly emptying bathtub which grows in urgency, and much of its nearly eight minutes is given over to a cloud of quickening tempos, twinkling glocks and furiously strummed guitars.
Elsewhere, "Ashley Seems To Think So" displays a similar rhythmical ingenuity, flicking between a 6/8 main-body beat that's equal parts swaying and chugging, and a lurching 5/4, 6/4 chorus, whilst "Your Curses Are A Victory" and "Wake Up" are hearty slabs of driving, forthright guitar rock that bands such as The Cardigans have made a career of. The nineties influence comes mostly in the form of the blazing college rock dynamism of "Ninetytwo" and "Doorbell", and the hazy, dreamy washes that have been liberally splashed over tracks such as "Wake Up" - whose plaintive girl-boy vocals play out that depressingly common story of romantic break-up ("I'm too scared to let go/And face life without you/I'm worried that we're running out of time) - and the soaring "Delay Song" and "Through The Looking Glass".
The lyrics, of gentle disenchantment and disillusion, offer little to write home about, but aren't so entirely worn out as to be incapable of a painting an intriguing image or two ("Be like the true romantics/And waste it away/There's promise in the young, naive/Until the fun decays", from the heartfelt "Doorbell").
To speak of a legacy is maybe premature, but then so, one could argue, was their parting. Even so, the album, warm and eager despite the cultivated outsider ethos, is never going to be anything more than a highly competent - and regretfully, highly promising - collection of cultured melodic rock songs. Perhaps the respective members will find success in another, more lasting, form. As it is, "Fly Close To The Ground" plays out as both their introduction and their conclusion, with an all too fleeting main body.
The Disguise on Bandcamp
|
