Parquet Courts meet Weezer on Madison, WI band Disq's debut album, Collector. The band's youth and enthusiasm, combined with their earnest Midwestern aesthetic, carries through in their frenetic, energetic first album. "Daily Routine," the song that kicks off the album, even implies flavours of Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys.
The band have decided to meld songs from a pile of demos that each of the five members have built up over the years. This has resulted in a complex and thorough album that provides a mixture of shoegazing indie rock and angst-fuelled post-punk. The album provides a remarkable sense of breadth for a debut from a group of relatively young people. But diversity, while an interesting choice, may not always be a good thing.
By providing listeners with so many options, the band have risked alienating the uninitiated. This might prove frustrating for individual listeners trying to dive into a specific sound and connect with a band on a deeper level. And while the scope of their songs is indeed impressive, it's clear that the album is a group of songs not necessarily related to one other.
Whether the band chose to do so to demonstrate their virtuosity, or merely their indecisiveness, has yet to be shown. Regardless, Collector is inspiring in its scale and complexity.
