Disq

Wisconsin-based band Disq – comprised of lifelong friends guitarist Isaac deBroux-Slone and bassist Raina Bock, guitarists Logan Severson and Shannon Conor, and drummer Stu Manley – shares the new single/video, “The Hardest Part,” from their new album Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet, out October 7th on Saddle Creek. “The Hardest Part” is another infectious release in a string of singles – “Cujo Kiddies,” “If Only,” and “(With Respect To) Loyal Serfs.” Across the track, Logan Severson’s vocals start off contained and emotive, before exploding over a wall of crashing percussion and guitar. It highlights Disq’s ability to create ever-shifting sonics that don’t compromise their music’s irresistibility. “‘The Hardest Part’ started with the riff and the instrumentation, which had been sitting dormant for several years until one late night the lyrics and melody came to me in a stream of consciousness, all at once,” says Severson. “Because I just let the words come to me, I don’t know exactly what the song is about, but I can feel what the song is about and it holds deep meaning to me. I’m still in the process of understanding what I was trying to tell myself when I wrote it.”

Desperately Imagining Somewhere Quiet is a record which reaffirms the charms of Disq’s debut Collector while pushing the sound and dynamic of the band in exciting and unexpected new directions. Now, Disq is a stronger band, more daring and more defiant. It is fitting that the clever backronym effectively makes this the band’s self-titled album, as it introduces the public to a new Disq, a band both seasoned by experience and newly invigorated toward vivid new heights.

Pushing play on Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet, it is easy to imagine that it is the year 1998, and your cool older sister has returned from her freshman year at college only to hand you the sort of mind-altering mixtape out of which lifelong rock fanatics are born. It is the sort of record Beck might have made in his prime, if you swapped out the hip-hop and delta blues of Odelay for midwestern emo, Scottish power-pop, and the sort of all-American indie that functions as “classic rock” for this cherubic cohort. Producer Matt Schuessler rarely lets a verse or chorus go by without adding some new sonic sparkle, keeping the arrangements an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of textures and moods. If there is a record in 2022 which squeezes more ideas into 41 minutes, then that record could surely only be the unlistenable mess that Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet avoids becoming so deftly.

This fall, Disq will tour North America in support of Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet. A full list of dates is below and tickets are on sale now.