Here’s something that I haven’t written about in a while…
Back in the early days of Swole Ear, I was listening to—and complaining about—a fair amount of lo-fi indie rock. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to a feedback-heavy record. Don’t worry, though, nothing’s changed. I still find most distortion-heavy indie rock monotonous and boring.
Disappears are playing at that AV Club Fest that I wrote about a few posts back. At this point (three negative band reviews in), you may be wondering why I’m going at all. Don’t worry, there are plenty of bands that I knew of pre-Swole that I’m very excited about. And who knows, maybe one of the bands that I don’t like on record will impress me live. It’s happened before.
Unless some crazy crowd involvement gets going, I can’t see that happening with Disappears, though. There’ll probably be a whole lot of hipster head bobbing going on, as some audience members attempt to convince everyone around them that they’re down with the scene and get the deep, deep meaning behind songs like Not Nothing or No Other, a meaning which must be going right over my head.
I guess this album is more than anything a reaffirmation that music taste is completely subjective. I can’t stand lo-fi, hi-feedback, avg.-talent, but there are tons of people who actually like this stuff. I just wish I saw in this the same thing that Disappears’ fans do. They can’t possibly all be pretending to get it. Can they?
Swole Ear 