| CD REVIEW The Disciplines |
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Band : The Disciplines The first time I heard this Norwegian’s bandname, I thought it was a perfectly nice monicker for a Garage Rock band…and that’s exactly what The Disciplines is! Well, the intro to the band’s biography which the label provided us talks about Indie, and goes ramblinng on about today’s popular music culture going into “post-post” nomenclatures, but taking this band’s music at its basics, it is really a Garage Rock act, isn’t it? And the members of the band ain’t the smallest guys in the business either! Frontman is none other than American Ken Stringfellow, co-founder of The Posies and also known from his collaborations with Big Star, Lagwagon, Snow Patrol, and Neil Young. Living in France for quite a few years now, he teamed up with Norwegian band Briskeby in 2005 for the chart-topping duet song “Joe Dallesandro”, which also became Briskeby’s last outing before they split up. The core of Briskeby (guitarist Björn Bergene, bassist Baard Helgeland, and drummer Claus Larsen) decided to continue, and found Strigfellow willing to fill in the frontman’s vacancy! Together, they developed a sound that is somewhat different from The Posies’ ornate and literate Rock, as well as from Briskeby’s icy and slick Pop. In Spring 2007 the new band recorded the song “Best Mistake” in their basement, and found it topping the charts of Norwegian radio throughout that year’s Summer. Obviously, the band had struck a chord, and they opted to work from their basement studio to record their debut full-length Smoking Kills, which was released in Norway late April 2008. The album was a huge success, and the song “Oslo” was played once an hour for 18 weeks on all major Norwegian radios. From playing a few initial smaller club shows, the band was invited to festivals overnight. The band then went on a solod-out club tour of Spain (6 months prior to the album’s release over there), and both R.E.M. and Snow Patrol took the band as support for massive arena shows. Meanwhile, singles were released both in vinyl and CD-single format (with accompanying videos on the CD-single versions) for the tracks “Yours For The Taking” (b/w “Wrong Lane”) and “There’s A Law” (b/w “Oslo”) in March of this year (the album was also at that time released in Spain, Portugal, and Andorra). One month later the album was issued in North America through the Second Motion Records label. All through that time, the band’s played gigs all over Europe, “doin’” Spain quite often, and in October of last, they even did a short North American tour. Mid November saw the band tour our neighborhood (played Hasselt’s Muziek-O-Droom on Nov. 13, and Oostende’s Manuscript on the 15th, also did a few gigs in Holland), but I’m afraid this review comes after the facts! Still, if you’re into very nice sing-along (hence melodic, in spite of the rather constant high pace of the tracks) Garage Rock, I dó recommend you check this band out at myspace.com/disciplines! 85/100 Tony. |