Chicago’s Disappears would like you to believe that their fourth LP, Era, stands for a new beginning. Well, they’re only half right. The album marries their previous releases in one noisy, polyamorous black wedding that shows promise for the future, but is more a celebration of the past. Think about the band’s 2012 LP Pre Language, and their song "Minor Patterns" where singer Brian Case sneers, “Why bother, it’s been done.” That defeatist phrase must be something that sticks in the craw of young psych acolytes. The well-worn motorik highway now seems too predictable, calling out for more hairpin turns, off-road detours, and above all some better scenery. On Era, Disappears begin to pave a path to transcendence that's a little more varied, grabbing the more anemic sounds of Clinic and Liars, while keeping the forward momentum of their most obvious influences Spacemen 3 and rough-edged Velvet Underground. They know they trade in the business of the past and work within confined musical language, but they play on, middle fingers scratching their eyebrows.
In the macro scope of Disappears’ catalog, Era is the moment when the groove finally locks into place. To call it a new beginning would be a disservice to the somewhat ill-advised territories the band has ventured into, especially with their EP Kone, released earlier this year. Kone's title track seems like a 15-minute flavorless psych wafer in contrast to the spritely but unfulfilling Pre Language. But it all starts to come together on Era: the post-punk propulsion, the protracted kraut rhythms born out of the negative spaces of no-wave, the macabre baritone croons. It’s been done before, but now it’s being done like Disappears.
Era swirls around its centerpiece, the nine-and-a-half minute “Ultra”. It's the song Disappears have been angling toward their career. If Swans ever decided to replace their bolo ties with skinny ties, they might’ve written something like it. After the departure of Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, Noah Leger lends a new energy to the band. He lays back in the pocket right with bassist Damon Carruesco for a rhythm section that sounds like it’s trying to be the extroverted kid but can’t stop sulking in the corner. So often Era sounds like an indictment of dance music with an industrial bent, a Ciroc martini served with a black beetle crawling around the rim.
Placed around the load-bearing “Ultra” is a family of tunes cut from a familiar cloth. “Elite Typical” is the burlier brother with a similar four-to-the-floor beat, while “Girl” opens the album like a starter canon, a one-song best-of compilation of the band’s shorter noise-rock tracks. There was always an unfulfilled desire with their songs on Lux and Guider, that sense that you wish the band would extend these songs out because if they’re just gonna cruise they might as well try to jam. With “Girl”, the band finally writes a shapely rock song in under four minutes.
Case’s sour baritone on Era is the final piece of the puzzle. He mirrors the band and obsesses over oblique phrases like, “Does it end together/ Does it end soon” on “Ultra” or “A new house in a new town” on the closer “New House.” Even with all his lyrical repetition, his words tend to crumble around the music, leaving only hints of something about fists answering first and waking up to a girl's touch. There’s a slice of glam sexuality to it in that disconcerting Birthday Party kind of way, though, like its lyrics, some of the music can veer into the murky waters of unspecificity. When Disappears don't shape their songs, like the unremarkable “Power”, they end up loitering in the space somewhere between air-drumming and space-tripping. Mostly, though, Era showcases all the work Disappears have done cutting and splicing and regathering their sound together to regain their identity. It’s still lurking in the shadows, but finally, it's there.
