Disconnect From Desire, the second album from The School of Seven Bells is a difficult beast to get a handle on. It is at once a joyous celebration of life and creation and also a bit cool and distant. It is more accessible than their first album, 2008’s Alpinisms while showing a bit more maturity in craft and execution of the ideas that evolved out of that album.
The “post-shoegaze” label that has been associated with the band doesn’t quite seem to fit because Disconnect From Desire seems more like a call back to artists like Everything But The Girl or even Very era Pet Shop Boys, yet with garage house elements supplemented with a breezy hazy swirl which is less essential to the sound than the layers upon layers of reverb and delay which has come to signify shoegaze. Gone is the euphoric rush of hands in the air style percussive builds, instead replaced with a tornado of progressive house rushes and drum fills.
Though the production work behind the twin voices of Alejendra and Claudia Deheza is only part of the overall picture, the album does seem to suffer. They are disconnected rather than intimately integrated into the album for which they are singing. Their voices are ready made to be stripped from the original songs and placed into the sure to come flood of remixes and reworkings that the album inspires. Individual tweaks to make songs more or less dance friendly and the alteration of genre all together.
“Windstorm” leads off the album, setting tone and tenor for what’s to come and is an excellent choice of first single, although not the best song. The best song is probably “Dust Devil” whose stabbed bass lines and nearly anti-pop singing is perfect to plug right into a sunrise set at a field rave. The album really only suffers on the back half when the energy and intensity of the opening songs gives way to song with similar tempos of the opening half but far more lackadaisical wind down of “Dial,” “Bye Bye Bye” and “The Wait.” While those final three songs aren’t as intense they are as well crafted as the previous tracks, it’s in “The Wait” that there is that perfect marriage of song and voice.
Disconnect From Desire is overall a bit of an anomaly. It’s a strong sophomore album that builds on their debut while not being chained to those ideas and themes. The fact that this album is thematically strong while still able to produce ten distinct songs is a great mark of the artists involved with its production
School of Seven Bells is set to perform at Brooklyn Bowl on September 9th. The show is $5 in advance or $7 Day of Show and should be well worth your time.