New Idea Society (SCQ's Year-End Questionnaire Part V)

New Idea Society recently began an extensive tour on the back of their criminally-overlooked LP Somehow Disappearing, first hitting the US before venturing into Europe next year. Still, that doesn’t prevent vocalist Mike Law from getting in touch to talk about their year and how certain figures, like Brian Eno and Prince, infiltrate their isolated creative process.

SCQ: Every list-lover's favourite question: what are your top albums of 2010? Feel free to include any older yet worthy records you discovered this year.

ML: I listened to a lot of Brian Eno and David Byrne this year. I discovered how good the band Big Country can be despite some doggy 80s recording techniques. Someone gave me the Rocafella Mixtape which I really like. I heard Sixto Rodriguez's excellent album, I bought several Ussachevsky vinyl albums that were played more than a few times, Prince didn't stray far away and I like Steve Brodsky's Black Ribbon Award. He is the twisted Prince on that album.

SCQ: What were you listening to a lot of while recording the excellent Somehow Disappearing?

ML: We specifically did not listen to too many other albums while recording Somehow Disappearing. It was a somewhat conscious effort to attempt and find our own sonic spectrum rather than copy someone. The only reference that I remember being made over and over was Brian Eno. I think that is a rather typical answer though. We are all trying to find the space that sonic Eno has in some ways.

SCQ: Be cocky for once in your life: what was the finest thing you did all year? That moment where you actually thought "shit, I nailed that..."?

ML: The recording of Halluminations sounds as close to how it does in my head as anything has. I think that songs like Summer Lion capture a unique mood. Szép Szív and Disappearing are really important songs to me. I also felt after our Berlin show last February that we really, really, were at the top of our game.

SCQ: Effect and Cause: Your new record first caught my attention as I made my way to a concert downtown. Watching the violet lights of a late-night bus flicker to life and feeling the first cool drafts of August through the window, 'Halluminations' left a deep impression on me. Okay, your turn: confess a true tale that inspired one of the songs on Somehow Disappearing.

ML: Disappearing was a lived dream, Strange Language was a dream lived, exactly as the words describe.

SCQ: If all the reasonable and implausible ideas in your head came to fruition in 2011, what would they be?

ML: Lots of touring the U.S., Europe and Japan, a new album and maybe another EP. I think most of those things will happen. All of what we do is rather implausible. We just make it happen.

Somehow Disappearing - New Idea Society

Somehow Disappearing

New Idea Society
Shiny Shoes Records.

SCQ Rating: 77%

A friend and I were recently discussing Autumn as a feeling, and how it registers to our senses long before the actual season goes about bringing leaves down and beckoning jackets from our closets. On a random August day we’ll feel the transition take hold of us, and no humidity or late-night fun from that point on feels genuinely summer-ish. Unsurprisingly, each August I find myself with a record that longs and bloodlets the way I do for Fall, so I hug it tightly. Perhaps New Idea Society’s knowing nod to The Cure’s commercial height gives Somehow Disappearing its understanding-starved center, or maybe it’s how the death of summer provokes lead-singer Mike Law’s urgent communications. When combined effectively, these weapons of modest drama inform the quintet’s third full-length with heavy handfuls of memorable dark pop.

Opening with the elegiac piano and undercut by some radiator distortion, ‘All Alone’ spreads out in aftermath, as if we’ve wandered into the first chapter of a forlorn diary. A song about disconnection more than abandonment, ‘All Alone’ isn’t nearly as Emo as it sounds on paper, even if Law’s voice does strike an unstable middle-ground between turn-of-the-century Conor Oberst and Matt Pryor of Get Up Kids. Somehow Disappearing is indebted to solid rock dynamics, fusing The Cure’s static mournfulness with peppy hooks on ‘Autumn You’ and piano sweeps on ‘Disappearing’. Contrasting the more upbeat, addictive numbers like ‘Strange Language’, New Idea Society display a flair for atmospheric slowburners as witnessed on the shimmering ‘Halluminations’ and the plodding momentum of ‘Come Outside’. The bands’ ability to evoke such compelling, eerie moods from a cheat-free set-up of guitars, piano, bass and percussion awards significant indie-credit, not to mention giving Law the freedom to hold onto each lyric as if they’re escaping from his wrists.

For all of the reasons stated above, it’s disappointing that Somehow Disappearing begins to self-fulfill its title with a second half that rarely competes with so many early highlights. No one song falls particularly flat but a short string of them dull the band’s sharp approach to songwriting. The relentless urgency pushing ‘Desolation Tongues’ gets a little claustrophobic while ‘If You Slip Under’ goes a few steps too deep – okay, way too deep - into Disintegration’s waters. Still, none of these slight lapses distract from New Idea Society’s obvious potential, which is spread across Somehow Disappearing's brooding majority.