Gig: Disappears

Disappears (Lovers Love Haters)

Sneaky Dee's. Tuesday, June 22, 2010.

Woe to the touring band that hits town on a stinkin' Tuesday night. Unless you've somewhat established or riding some hype, it's tough to get people out. Even still, I was surprised to find a nearly-empty venue when I climbed the stairs up to Sneaks. Even as the openers took the stage, there weren't many bodies in front of the stage.

I had never heard of Lovers Love Haters, and as they hit the first strains of "Dead End Trail" — also the first track on their agreeable self-released EP — the first thing I jotted in my notebook was "sounds like: The Organ". Which, I found out after, turned out to be on point as frontwoman Debora Cohen was, in fact, the guitarist in that band. That's not to say that this is just a re-hash, but obviously Cohen helped shaped The Organ's sound and is working from some of the same aesthetic starting points, which include mopey British rock à la The Smiths, spiky guitars and greysky keyboards. Described as a "bicoastal solo project", the band apparently features Cohen working with different collaborators both here and in Vancouver. Backed by guit/bass/keyb/drums, she kept to the mic for this show, though wasn't a big banterer between songs, at one point commenting, "we're Lovers Love Haters... and that's about it."

Good performances all around — well rehearsed, but a bit stiff like a pair of shoes not yet fully broken in.¹ "Poison" featured a nice guitar line and was pretty enjoyable, as was "Sounds and Silences". Besides the six songs from their EP, they threw in a cover² for a concise set. The band has an enjoyable sound, and certainly shows promise. In a sense, they've arrived fully-formed, but one also gets the sense that so far they're mining deep within one vein and it will be interesting to see how things grow from here.

Listen to a track from this set here.

In a slightly surreal touch, a Beach Boys megamix played in the background as Disappears get ready to play. A pretty straightforward two-guitar set-up, no huge racks of pedals or anything like that. I look around while they're tuning and count about a dozen people in the room. Looks like word hasn't gotten around.

Myself, I was intrigued by what I'd read about the band — their debut album Lux was being released by the venerable Kranky label, even if it falls outside of that label's usual sound. I'd picked it up and had found their guitar rock right down my alley — lean but not austere and simplistic but not minimal. The musical attack brought to mind rigourous deadpan chugging of The Fall (though not at all similar in the vocal delivery). Or think of it, maybe, as the bastard offspring of "TV Eye" and "European Son" and, maybe, a skipping record. It's not for nothing that their listed influences include "repetition". There's definitely a Krautrock thing going on — seen both in their visuals on their album art to the fact they had some shows opening up for Michael Rother's Hallogallo 2010 project. Musically, it's well encapsulated in their album's title track.

Live, there was an extra layer of distortion on frontman Brian Case's vocals that's not there on the recordings.³ Besides material from Lux the band played a new one called "Guider", which was a bit faster than the other ones, and sported a fuzzy bassline. But largely the music was consistent loud, controlled aggression.

Case wasn't a big talker, and the songs mostly slid straight from one to the next, making for a fiercely efficient thirty-five minute set. Without much of a crowd to react back, my reaction was more cerebral than visceral, but I think if there were more bodies on the floor they'd be reacting to the music. Wrong place, wrong time, I guess — if these guys were on stage at The Silver Dollar on a Saturday night, they'd gain more than a few converts. Hopefully they'll make it back to these parts.⁴

A couple tracks from this set: check out one that appears on Lux here and one that doesn't here.

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¹ Although, to be sure, this kind of music is sort of stiff by its nature — you wouldn't expect them to get funky with it or anything.

² Which I couldn't identify — the chorus-y bit went something like "under the brutal moon / what could be done to her?" Anyone know it?

³ Case is also involved with 90 Day Men, as well as The Ponys, who I recall having seen opening for Spoon back in '07.

⁴ The band has a fair amount of music — two singles and a live album — that you can grab for free at their website, should you want to check them out.