It’s a given: with today’s popular culture, the joke is either on you (post post-irony irony); or the content is so pathetic as to be worthy of a joke (er, rhymes with Itney Ears) or is so serious as to make jokes unwelcome (99% of indie rock is as dour as the security line at the airport--and offers a similar role: suffer first to atone for your escapist pleasure). There are very few safe havens in the entertainment menu.
This is a pity, because this is the age of the Darwinian superhero--anyone in popular culture is expected to an actor, musician, activist, author, fitness freak/guru, playboy/girl, wife/husband of someone of similar caliber. An entertainer is supposed to do it all, effortlessly. With only so much talent spread oh-so-thin, of course, the ranks are now replenished with the talentless--a bunch of people who can’t sing captivate the attention of a national audience by singing badly, after which they are scolded for not being able to sing. Entertainment? It sounds like a penal colony.
There are alternatives. Saviors, even. Four of them, the Four Norsemen of the Apocalypse, come to liberate the living and the brain-dead. THE DiSCiPLiNES. Three Norwegians, ex-members of Nordic pop sucess story Briskeby, and one American, Ken Stringfellow, whose extensive resume includes founding one of the 90s most critically acclaimed bands, the Posies; touring worldwide with R.E.M., and providing terawatts of energy and talent to artists such as Big Star, Lagwagon, Snow Patrol and Neil Young. Ken’s a European now, having been based in France for some years, and in his frequent tours of the Continent he teamed up with Briskeby in 2005 with a chart-topping duet hit single called “Joe Dallesandro”, the band’s swan song. The core of the group--drummer Claus Larsen, bassist Baard Helgeland and guitarist Bjorn Bergene--and Ken decided to carry on, and quickly developed a sound that might be seen as the antithesis of the Posies ornate, literate rock and Briskeby’s icy, slick pop; THE DiSCiPLiNES shoot from the hip and aim for the head, heart and the naughty bits all at once, in a streamlined, succinct and stabbing series of nasty jabs.
The group’s first effort, a raw, in the basement recording called “Best Mistake” topped the Norwegian radio charts for an entire summer in 2007; the band worked on an album and wisely chose to stay in the basement to record it. The result, SMOKiNG KiLLS, was released to huge acclaim in Norway in Spring 2008. The song “Oslo” was played once an hour for 18 weeks on all the major radios in the country.
The band went from a few tenative club shows to headlining festivals straight out of the gate. The band traveled to Spain to play a sold out club date in Barcelona--6 months in advance of the album’s release there. Snow Patrol and R.E.M. both took the band as support for massive arena shows. SMOKiNG KiLLS is snarly, but catchy; direct, but not dumb; winky but not snarky.
The songs race by in brutal efficiency, and within the garage-y production you might miss the delicate smattering of wordplay tucked in amongst the singalong chourses. Playing live, the band is uplifting, taking its cues from the community and spirit of a hardcore show, but with an entirely different musical agenda. A Pilates-enhanced Stringfellow lapdances on the security guards; pencil thin medical student Bergene karate kicks the air while maintaining a Billy Zoom-like grin; Larsen and Helgeland anchor the antics with fabulous, titanium-solid fuzz bass and drums.
Set to visit the US and Canada in 2009, THE DiSCiPLiNES are neither comic relief nor academic sobriety--they are just a band fulfilling their mission, in a spectacularly entertaining fashion. Give them two minutes and eighteen seconds; they will give you their lives.
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