"Maybe I'll throw myself down these stairs, just to see if anybody cares"
- BOMBS BY NIGHT, BALLOONS BY MORNING
It’s really hard to write a review about a record made by someone you actually know somewhat. Really. I just wanted to point that out.
Well, Disclaimer is a little project consisting of Chris Willie
Williams and his girlfriend Jenny (“Ginny”) Rydin. This album is sort of Chris’
solo album, though – obviously Jenny had too much to do to be able to join him
much during the recording sessions. The intention is that she will sing whenever
they get signed by a record company, though (yeah, they better get a contract
some day!). The album is recorded with a mic and a computer at their home, and
Chris sort of plays all sorts of instruments; guitars, keyboards, base, drums...and
some computer programming as well. Jenny is supposed to play any instrument
as well.
The style varies from garage rock to indie and alternative pop, calmer, more
spaced out synth tunes as well as there’s a cover of a Pet Shop Boys tune and
some music from Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. And stuff. Well, there’s really
lots of stuff, and nothing seems to be anything like a rewrite of the
previous, so here we are. A really varying album.
The opening tune is “Disclaimer Guy Theme”, a very short little tune meant to accompany one of Jenny’s animations. Kinda pointless, since there’s no animation to accompany on an audio CD.
“Your Bird Is Going To Fly Away”, on the other hand, is a genuinely garagey pop tune with a masterful hook. It opens with a pretty simplistic bas line and some neat keyboard tunes. A loud guitar is added in the chorus, and there you are. This tune really deservers some radio play.
“The Imaginary Thing” is quite garage-rocky as well. It has a strong hook in the chorus, with a cool vocal/keyboard interplay, but the verses are quite scanty. “Clockwork Drudgery” has a couple of computer-programmed drum beats, which sort of rules the whole song. There is a cool guitar line, though, and, far away and behind everything else are the vocals. Switch places with the drums and guitars, making the latter the loudest, and you have a Felt-ish song structure. But, that’s really irrelevant.
“Five Mile Hill” is a neat indie pop tune, with lots of acoustic guitars and so. The whole song sounds like a pretty poorly recorded live performance, and some plus there, I dig poorly recorded live stuff, but the song isn’t anything special, really. “Life In Detail”, a cover of Allen Powell’s and Robert Palmer’s Pretty Woman .soundtrack tune, rocks quite hard, and this time I can’t help but think of Dee Long, the ex-Klaatu member, who has released some tracks in this style. According to Chris himself, he has never heard either Klaatu or Dee Long, though, so I guess that’s just a coincidence...cool stuff anyway. It ends up with some quite disturbing clics and stuff, but that’s the point, I guess. “The Decipherment Of Linear B” begins were “Life In Detail” ended, with some more clics and stuff, but soon becomes a calm, quite dark tune, driven by some keyboards and a base. There’s some clics here and there during the whole song, but those are a part of the song now. Moody stuff.
“Billy Morgan”, a The Men They Couldn’t Hang cover, is also really moody, with speedy drums and bass playing, though of course it could be computer-made. It’s quite hard to hear the difference when the sound of the recording is as dizzy as it is here. Anyway, it’s quite an awesome song, even if the little harmonica parts sounds a bit cheesy. But, that’s okay. It IS a really great tune, even if it is a cover. But, who cares.
“Unopposed” opens with some weird little keyboard noises and becomes a weird tune with quite weird everything. Base, guitars, percussion...yeah, really cool. The comes a part which I guess should be the chorus, and then the second verse comes back with voice-twisters and various synth “blips”. Yeah. Cool.
“Ultra XX Living Solely On XY” is another genious tune, a moody thing with a steady beat and really effective guiatr playing. The guitars sounds a whole lot like Al di Meola on Scenario. That’s really cool too. Aw, I don’t know what there’s to say...I just dig the tune, especially the atmosphere.
“Bet She’s Not You Girlfriend” is, you guessed right, the Pet Shop Boys cover. It’s as synthy as the original, but since the melody is great, I guess I can take it. Otherwise I use to be quite reluctant to listen to wholly synth-made tunes. Except of Kitaro, of course!
“Maybe Today He’ll Explode” is more garage/punk stuff. The next track isn’t really called anything, but it’s the Punch-Out music. And hey, it’s cool. The music to old NES games are often cool. Hope that he’ll cover the MegaMan 1 & 2 music too, some day!
“Why Are They Laughing?” is another darn moody tune, with a great noise collage in the background, neat vocals, and a very neat (Kitaro-like!) keyboard line. Yeah, great. “Similar To Sugar Pill” is more like traditional, not too ambitious indie pop. And, well, that was that, I guess. Chris is obviously a guy who can create a song out of nothing, with surprisingly good results, even if the album does have a few lower points. But, on the other hand, the really great tunes outnumber those, and those which are just simply a good listen are quite a few as well. The quite dizzy production was a problem for me the first couple of times I listened to the disc, but I’ve got used to that, and quite like it nowadays. And, heck, it’s a big big shame that they haven’t got a contract with any record label, they really deserve it.
Oh, and then there’s this link which I decided to put at the bottom of the review, just so that you wouldn’t go there immediately, but rather read the review first. www.disclaimerband.com!
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