Review Summary: The prognosis…is discosis.
Everything about my first listen to Bran Van 3000’s
Discosis told me that this was going to be a stupidly disconcerting experience. With the album featuring no less than
eleven guest artists, random infusions of roomy Senegalese dance rhythms, bass cuts syncopated so harshly that they sound explosive, and reckless sampling of works by Curtis Mayfield, Antonio Hardy, and Baba Varma, it seemed like only a matter of time before the spit and prayers that held the entire affair together at the seams buckled in protest at the ridiculous load that they were being asked to carry. Worse, a quick scan of the album’s back cover revealed that the entire wank affair had been haphazardly jammed into a
seventeen track playlist – about half a dozen songs too many for a man whose attention span can, at times, make goldfish look smart. And to top it all off, all this had happened even before the appearance of the mid-album track, “Jean Leloup’s Dirty Talk”, which opens with a line that goes, “
Well, that was fun/But I’m still horny/I think I’ll maybe suck on Bruno’s cock for awhile.” Great – not only is this album an absolute f
ucking mess, it also comes strapped with a libido that can be seen from the moon.
But once the haze clears, it becomes readily apparent that
Discosis, for all her (female pronoun deliberate) flaws, is also brilliant. Much like her parent band, the album is a breath of fresh air in a Canadian music scene excessively dominated by – all respect to them – eerily familiar and borderline derivative indie acts desperately hoping to ape some of the success of bands like Arcade Fire, Metric, and Broken Social Scene, with mixed results. I can think of no one else who sounds
quite like Bran Van 3000 – and the truth is that’s probably a good thing for all involved really, for how many actually want to listen to this sort of thing anyway? The absurdity of Bran Van 3000’s style of music is such that it is often about an inch away from being completely unsustainable. Yet, the band actually seem to
revel in their own implausibility: it seems to have granted them an almost non-caustic sense of immortality. By deliberately ignoring the signs that their marriage of hip hop, alternative rock, pop, and glittery electronica is a fusion that simply does not make sense, and that even on their best days, they somehow contrive to separate the best of these aforementioned genres in a way that is too disjointed and too alienating for most to enjoy or even comprehend, the band is able to dive straight into the deep end and surface with some startling results.
Opening track “Astounded” is one of them. Blessed with a dense, electrochemical groove, and a series of hushed “ooohs” in the background that serve only to heighten the tempo, the song tosses off the kind of carefree, late-night party groove in a way that only the best anthems can. Any coherence beyond the oft-repeated refrain of “All I want to do is love you” is, for all intents and purposes, strictly unnecessary. Elsewhere, “Loop Me” acts as the antithesis of the opening track, working silently in its niche as a prowling, silky number whose main body of strength lies in the vocal performances of the sultry Bran Van girls. Third track “Montreal” may feature a curiously subdued Youssou N’dour, but it still manages to round up the album’s opening sequence nicely, with its smooth segue into the dirty funk riffs of “BV3” being one of the most satisfying moments of the entire record.
A lot of the album’s erstwhile charm comes from its unabashed nature and apparent disregard for the 21st century’s notions of modesty, which takes on more substance than just the luridly detailed album art seen on the front cover. Whether the band is discussing its apparent apodysophilia on “Loaded” (“
I want to play guitar/And be a movie star/Be in the B-movies/And take off all my clothes”), describing a lover’s body on “Go Shoppin’” (“
On her chest my name written/Just below her nipple”), or dishing out none-too-subtle metaphors for the act of carnal intercourse on “More Shopping” (“
Imagine I’m a weapon in your sheath”), it all comes across as desperate, hushed, and meaningful, akin to the unintentional sincerity of a pair of soft porn movie actors, catching themselves in each other’s eyes for the very first time since filming began. But the brevity and vigour to these brief sexual encounters is not to be underestimated; make no mistake,
Discosis is a ravishing young lady slowly coming to terms with her own sensuality, and the way she learns best is by experimenting. The manner in which this explains the album’s haphazardness is poetic, and seems almost deliberate.
Yet the fulcrum on which everything really falls into place, that moment in where the record becomes more than just a woefully misdirected album made by a bunch of pavement-dwelling Montrealites with all the talent in the world but not an ounce of self-control, is on “Speed”. Here the entire band, left to their own devices for once on the album, carefully make way for each other, allowing individual talents to shine through. The song focuses, with utter devotion, on just hitting the next note and taking every moment as it comes, hoping that by the end of it all, a portrait of the artist will shine through. As the croons of “Hold on, hold on” echo softly in the background, the album chooses that exact moment to fall perfectly between not being too brash and too extravagant, nor too forced or too pedantic. It is in that smallest of moments that things seem absolutely perfect. Who knew that clarity could be so disconcerting.
