School of Seven Bells, Disconnect From Desire
[Vagrant/Ghostly International]
Reviewed By: Chris Polley
Phew. For a while I thought I was crazy. I thought that I’d like any album that came across my headphones as long as it sounded pretty. Nuts to innovation or energy or melody: as long as the instruments were warm and the voices cooed softly in my ears, I’d take the bait and sit gently on my cloud of enjoyment, ignoring the world around me in favor of the sweet bliss of aesthetic beauty. Unfortunately, to understand that indeed this isn’t the case like I thought, I had to have a falling out with a band that two years ago I was almost certain would become the next Cocteau Twins, the next band with two seductive and ethereal female singers that mattered. That band was and is School of Seven Bells, whose sophomore effort Disconnect From Desire, following 2008’s astounding Alpinisms, is exactly what its title declares with seemingly little care: a major disconnect from what I wanted.
In a way, this was expected. The band was and clearly still is rife with intelligence and forward-thinking in their music-making. They’re not just letting out through the amps what’s flowing through their veins (though that certainly is part of it); they’re also meticulously mapping out their song structures and electronic/organic ratios like pop-centric math equations, making sure everything is balanced and gorgeous. “Never too much, never too little” has been their motto, and last time it worked like gangbusters. The trio’s debut was a sleeper hit surprise of the fall and winter of that year, slowly inching its way into everyone’s hearts not because it screamed at the listener and not because it was way far out in left field, but rather because it had the dream-pop formula down so pat that it just kind of slinked past people’s ears and into their brains until it finally became apparent how much wriggling power it had. Here, that ethic is largely similar (so perhaps in a way it’s unfair to judge it so early, even after a good half dozen listens), but the execution is pale and clinical in comparison.
The whole reason behind being fastidious and scrupulous in the studio should be to create the most honest and true portrait of one’s sound, not to do it just for the sake of perfection, and this is where Disconnect largely falls short. And I don’t think it’s fair to say that this is the effect School of Seven Bells (also known as SVIIB) was going for, because if the instrumental tracks (minus a few key guitar lines that are sparsely emotive) were severed from the vocals, you’d still find the core of the band that existed on Alpinisms. There is still a deep detached longing aching within the objectively powerful voices of twin singers Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, the pinnacle of which can be found in “ILU” and scattered throughout the album’s ten tracks. The ill-fated element of this, however, is that detachment that makes their voices infinitely listenable in the first place. Because of this, it becomes so easy to understand why then the limp drum loops and recycled synth sounds of the 80s only help the songs become more lifeless. But hey, I guess not everyone can twist this stuff around like M83 can.
And so forgettable ditties like “Dust Devil” and “Camarilla” resurrect themselves like shiny opulent skyscrapers that are nothing more than lighted blobs of concrete in the dark night sky. They’re pleasant but innocuous backdrops that required a lot of labor and love, but ultimately neither shone through in the final product. Listen close enough and maybe you can convince yourself that the pieces that make up the whole are superior components than your average pop songwriter, especially in the crowded field of electro-pop, but it’s not until you step back and try to admire the work that you realize it’s just another collection of songs trying harder to be immaculate than to be something of note. This metaphor is turning way more scathing than I originally intended, but it’s also revealing a hard truth that I’m coming to accept more and more as I wade through Disconnect looking for redeeming qualities: sometimes a song is just a song. Sometimes a pretty album is just a pretty album.
On the other hand, the penultimate statement of that paragraph could easily be bolded to point out that even though most of the songs on Disconnect are placid pools of electronic fluff, there are three in particular that stand out amongst the neon beige of the rest of it. Opening track “Windstorm” is a cavalcade of sound reminiscent of much of the band’s first album, and while it may act as a kind of unnecessary reprise in the midst of the attempted progression, it also serves as a welcome stepping stone between the less controlled atmosphere that SVIIB have proven themselves capable of perfecting. Still, it’s nothing mind-melting or life-altering, but it’s full, it’s rich, and it doesn’t sound like it’s trying to fly by just under the radar. The strange lilting riff that goes in and out of the mix and matches the vocal melody is so infectious that the very naturalistic piling on of percussion underneath it all almost makes it sound as if the Dehezas and multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Curtis are smiling as they’re performing in their bedroom studio, not squinting and staring at the wave-forms, trying ever so carefully to play God.
Also, along with “ILU”, discussed above, the closing track “The Wait” incorporates such poignant shimmering guitars that it’s hard to even pay attention to anything else going on in the song, which turns out to actually be okay because it’s the album’s only ballad. Fortunately, even though it’s the quietest the band has ever gotten, there’s also more than enough to listen for if you’re not an addict of the subtle tremolo-laden sound of new wave legends like Porl Thompson or Peter Koppes. In a nutshell, what makes “The Wait” act as a near beacon of hope for SVIIB to get back on their feet with a third record is the fact that it sounds so different from anything the band has done up until this point. Here they don’t care about the equation – they care about conveying an emotion and letting the music build naturally and effortlessly around itself from beginning to end. Of course this is pop music we’re talking about, so it’s still following a formula to a certain point, but its refusal to fall into the easy quiet-to-loud pattern we’ve heard a thousand times before for pop ballads is impressive. It proves that the trio still have unique thoughts and can remain true to their instincts without over-calculating, and that’s promising for the band’s future. For now, though, we’ll just have to hit repeat on the songs that matter and sit tight.
Rating: 60%