Weird House
Chicagoans Disappears release their new record Era on Kranky Records and it's a crashing, looping mantra of spooky noise and circular lyrics making for a album of occasionally unsettling character. The skeletal thrum of Girls opens the album setting up things perfectly for what's to follow with singer Brian Case sounding so close, as if his breath could be felt on your ear while the music distracts your conscious mind using slinky electronics, metallic guitars and shadowy electronics.
Ultra clicks in after Power humming with menace like a White Hills tune. Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space and it is uncomfortable...real uncomfortable especially when three voices haunt the last minute of the track: "if you go, I'll go...Does it end together? Does it end soon?" Weird House could almost be a tag for the music that Disappears have written for Era all dance music for zombies with a hard hitting beat from Noah Leger making the undead twitch.
The creepiness continues with Elite Typical poking and prodding and Case goading, "you think about her all the time." Disappears revel in sparse constructions and the creep and murk of their freakish industrial-krautpsych. Ultra does this best, Era (the song) toys with something approaching rock while the rest of the album stays closer to the minimalism of Spacemen 3 with Case's voice providing the personality.
The album signs off with New House with its Doppler screeches and Case telling us that he "can't seem to shake this anything, anything, anything, anything" and you'll feel that way too after completing this obsessive noirish record.