My Dear Disco want you to dance and think. According to guitarist/co-producer Robert “Squirrel” Lester, “this term called dance think, it’s an idea of music that is as good to your body as it is to your mind, multi-purpose music that you can listen to by yourself in the car and enjoy it as much as you do at a show when you’re letting yourself liberate physically.”
I can attest to the fact that their music accomplishes both, and it’s uncanny how the experience is markedly different in each context. I hadn’t ever heard them before last Thursday night, when they played a low-key show at Baltimore’s Hexagon Space. The venue was BYOB — bring your own booty. And shake it. So sez rock star keyboardist Joey Dosik: “booty booty dance rock booty booty dance rock booty booty booty booty booty booty dance rock.”
Start with Mew, take away the Jon Anderson-influenced vocal, replace it with an aesthetic borne of Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, and let some kids who couldn’t care less who Mew are play it with youthful, unhindered, but impossibly perfect, abandon. When lead singer Michelle “Mich.-Ella” Chameul adds a smooth, soulful voice to the party, the picture is complete.
It boiled down to that simple formula on the floor of the club, and it felt good. But at the same time, there were astonishing things going on musically. Theirs is music played to Steely Dan-level intricacy, with disjointed bursts and spurts, always playing with the time, never out of time. When listening in the car it almost becomes stripped of all its immediacy and becomes a cerebral prog experience, but with lyrics about chasing a girl in a club.
It makes sense given their evolution. Drummer Mike “Regal” Shea: “We formed in an academic institution [The University of Michigan School of Music], in an intellectual environment, and our values there were oriented around composition and recording, and then we put an album out, and our focus shifted to the performance aspect of our live show.” In this transition, their music has stuck a deeper groove, and they fool you into thinking that the songs are catchier than they are. In the car, they’re not catchy at all.
That is a bit of a problem for me. This music makes me beg for that big Duran Duran chorus. And it doesn’t come. The closest moment is on “Amsterdam,” which bounces along like Lily Allen, but not quite as hummable. The brilliantly-titled “M.Y.F. (Move Your Feet)” accomplishes its purpose, but in an exasperatingly geek-rock way. When the chorus comes, the dynamic swells perfectly, and I want an anthem, and what I get are crazy chord changes, followed by a math-rock instrumental breakdown for a middle-eight. Mind you, I didn’t experience this frustration at all in their live show. It was too much fun, and as advertised, it played with the brain, trying to keep up with all that was going on.
But much of it is yet only potential. Their mentality is honorably inclusive and humble for such a young group starting out. Joey: “The best show we can play is one where there’s a tangible exchange between us and the audience, and the club, back to us. If you put us in a room full of people, we will make them feel good.” They’re careful not to call themselves the “greatest band in the world” and they speak of “paying their dues.” I would actually like to see them grow into a bit more selfishness, not forgetting the crowd, but allowing themselves a sod-all pursuit of crazy, sick spectacle. This is a band that could do spectacle. If I were their manager, I would push them all toward makeup and glitter. They stand in such sharp, refreshing contrast to so much of the mediocre, pseudo-emo obscurity that pervades indie rock today, so why do they look just like everyone else?
I hate to hold it against a group for being nice guys, but the band needs a George Clinton-sized personality. Joey and Michelle are the most likely candidates, and Joey seems on his way there, projecting an intense, yet aloof coolness. But Michelle struck me as a calm before a storm. It’s hard to read someone in 30 minutes, but I get the feeling she’s in a cocoon, brewing, stewing, not sure of her ability to swoop like a mad moth. She carries it on stage but she doesn’t kill it. And she could.
For now, the band are progressing nicely, especially considering how young they are. If they come to your town, they are not to be missed. They will dazzle you, and they will make you feel good. Here’s hoping the band puts together a real Disco Demolition as they take it from here — sticking with the virtuosity and precision, but sweetening it more often with sugary hooks — and goes after world domination. Until then I’ll shake my booty and marvel at the time signatures.
My Dear Disco: The Way
My Dear Disco: Amsterdam
My Dear Disco: M.Y.F. (Move Your Feet)
Once or twice a week, I pass through the “Miracle on 34th Street” – the boundless bombast of garish lights that floods the one block between my house and my favorite watering hole, Rocket to Venus. They sell hot sausages there, three for $5. There are Christmas trees made of hubcaps, and one made of old vinyl records. there’s a Natty Boh logo in lights. There are gawkers galore. Tonight we wish you “Season’s Greetings” from Baltimore, USA, with hopes of more substantial tidings to come. To usher in these greetings, we have a stellar track from Baltimore’s finest, Beach House, and one from Baltimore’s most obscure group, the Catbirds.
Woke up with a feelin’ last Tuesday, and there I was lyin’ on the floor. Bears in hibernation, cats on the prowl, moles scurrying for their lives… the whole scene opened up before my eyes. I wrote it down. It became “Kitty’s First Words, Part 2.” I wrote a rock opera, basically.
