This Chicago band’s career trajectory has been a singularly impressive and curious one, as they have somehow managed to continually reinvent their sound while still getting exponentially better with each new album.  Era makes that trend seem even more remarkable, as Disappears have made yet another huge leap forward despite tampering with what was arguably their best feature (Brian Case's dissolute-sounding, deadpan vocals) and losing drummer Steve Shelley to Lee Ranaldo's new band. As it turns out, neither are missed, as the band more than compensate by paring their aesthetic down to pummeling, machine-like precision mingled with great hooks and well-placed eruptions of chaos.
The first time I put this album on, the opening "Girl" made me nearly jump out of my skin, as its transition from a clean, unadorned bass riff to full-on rock fury could not have been more abrupt or unexpected. As far as songcraft goes, it is far from the album's best moment, but its collision of drum solo, guitar squall, and obsessively repeating, heavily processed vocals achieves quite an impressive amount of brute force while staying grounded enough by its bass line to feel like a groove.  It is no small feat to sound explosive for the entire duration of a four-minute song, but Disappears somehow did it.  Presumably exhausted afterward, the band settles down noticeably for next six songs, but a few core motifs from "Girl" stick around for the duration, namely the use of guitars as a textural tool (rather than a melodic one) and Brian Case's surprisingly effective tendency to endlessly repeat brief phrases (and slather his vocals with effects).
The following "Power" is a bit of a mixed bag, as it finds Case regressing a bit into his former GVSB/Mark E. Smith-esque vocal affectations, but he certainly sounds cool doing it and it is probably the album's strongest choice for a single, mixing a darkly sexy groove, subtly snarling wah-wah, and quite a bit of laconic, syllabically enhanced charisma.  The album's other two stabs at fairly straightforward rock ("Era" and "Weird House") do not quite hit the same heights, but "Weird House" does offer some appealing unhinged vocals and some neat guitar sounds.  Fortunately, the remaining songs are all great enough to compensate for any comparative lulls the album might have.  The least of them, "Elite Typical," is a bit of a throwback to early Gang of Four/Pop Group-style post-punk (which I am the target demographic for), but the other two are a bit more unique (and both are also inarguable career highlights).
Due to both its length (9:30) and sheer greatness, it is hard to see "Ultra" as anything other than the album's centerpiece and crowning achievement.  It certainly has a lot going for it, as it combines an alternately stomping and stuttering beat with some kind of machine sample, loads of elegantly restrained guitar abuse, and some of Case's most cryptically menacing vocals (centered around an echo-heavy deadpan mantra of "If you go, I'll go").  Of course, it is the execution that matters most and that is where Disappears shine brightest, particularly the rhythm section: the groove is insistent, yet constantly shifting, maintaining a strong tension without ever quite offering any kind of relief or catharsis.  Also, in a broader sense, "Ultra" could only be a Disappears song, a significant achievement for such a historically chameleonic band, particularly since they manage to sound unique through restraint and understatement (no real choruses, no real melodies, no real riffs).
That said, my favorite song of all is the closing "New House," which has stayed stuck in my head for weeks now.  Much like "Ultra," it is built upon little more than a subdued drum part (just toms and a high-hat) and a looping bit of machine-noise, but it is even more sparse this time around and Case's vocals are even more brilliantly creepy and echoing.  I cannot think of many people besides Brian Case who can endlessly repeat a phrase like "a new house in a new town" until it sounds like nothing less than the ghoulish musings of a man with a backyard filled with dead prostitutes (I also happen to be target demographic for ghoulish musings).
Era is truly a landmark album for this formidable foursome–everything has finally come together.  While it is not quite perfect from start to finish, it may as well be.  It is hard imagine any way that its best parts could have been any better: it is basically a master class in how to sound amazing, as Disappears prove that all you need is a strong rhythm section, some good ideas, enough space for those ideas to make an impact, and enough time to strip away anything that detracts at all from overall badassness.  Equally importantly, Era is both the first Disappears album that I can happily listen to in its entirety and the first album where there are some brilliant songs that sound distinctly like Disappears and not like Disappears skillfully channeling one of their many influences (I am almost certain that I will be dismissing new bands as "too derivative of Disappears" within the next couple of years).  This is going to be all over "best of 2013" lists in a couple months.
 
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