The Dissociatives are huge in Australia. They've been spending time toward the top of the Australian charts, they were nominated for six ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Music Awards (and might have won some were it not for the inexplicable widespread success of Jet), and they just saw their first video win Video of the Year at the Australian MTV Video Music Awards. Now, a full year after the release of The Dissociatives self-titled debut in Australia, it's finally been deemed suitable for release in countries not surrounded entirely by water.
The Dissociatives is the product of Australian dance music maven Paul Mac and Daniel Johns, best known as the frontman for Silverchair. The pair first met when Paul remixed “Freak” by Daniel’s band, Silverchair, in 1997. Over the years that followed, Paul contributed “keyboards and other noises” to Silverchair’s “Neon Ballroom” and “Diorama” albums. He also guested onstage with the band a couple of times. Through these creative experiences the guys became friends. This led them to create an experimental EP called “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Rock” in 2000. In mid 2003 the pair got together to write and record “The Dissociatives”. The pair’s decision to form The Dissociatives grew out of all these experiences and the fast friendship that formed as a result. Both Daniel and Paul definitely see their new band as “more than just a side project”. They elected to produce the disc themselves. All the music was written jointly with Daniel subsequently penning the words and melodies. They recorded the basic tracks in London then a few months later they regrouped in Sydney and Newcastle to finish it off.
In The Oxford Dictionary a dissociated personality (in Psychological terms) is the pathological coexistence of two or more distinct personalities in the same person. This description goes a long way in defining The Dissociative’s style of music. Background aside, however, the album is pop. Not just any pop, mind you, this is pop music that makes pop music seem like an appealing idea again, pop music that could, possibly, just maybe appeal to an audience out of their early teens. It's "pop" because there's nothing else to call it -- it's not heavy enough to be rock, there's not a shade of R&B to be found, and it's just too pretty (and, often, too slow) to be strictly for dancing. It's just a tight, cohesive happy pill that'll keep even jaded listeners humming for days.
"Because of Paul's background and my background, [a lot of people] expected it to be a dance-rock collaboration, which we're trying desperately to dispel," Johns said. "We're not really fans of that genre." Instead, they set out to make the perfect pop record. "Some people jokingly referred to it as a 'happy radio hit,' " Mac said, "which I think is actually quite a good description. We're trying to make interesting, really colorful, but at the end of the day, pop music. Songs that provide you with a kind of certainty and also challenge you with what we were trying to do. Not so much fit in, but trying to fill what we thought was kind of a void in modern pop music "We were both intent on making an album that had artistic validity and wanted to make something that was different [than] everything out there. Something inspiring without being pretentious. A lot of our favorite music [has] a sense of humor without being comical. You don't sit there and laugh, [but] a wry grin is always a good thing." Plus, he continued, "It's good to have a little humor in music. It kind of brings greater contrasts when there are moments that you want to take seriously. There are always moments after that where you can kind of smile and breathe a sigh of relief."
Opening track "We're Much Preferred Customers" is a red herring. Electronic Kid A-isms abound, as electronic noises and pianos flutter above a steady but quiet backbeat. Johns' gifted voice is twisted and bent into an instrument of dread, sputtering lines like "Birds creep over tin roofs / Like criminals with tap shoes." Eventually the light peeks through, as Johns displays a gift for lush harmony via multi-tracked vocals, as he offers "You'll get a chance, another chance / One more sun." Over the course of the rest of The Dissociatives, that Sun never sets.
Even song titles like "Horror With Eyeballs" and "Aaängry Megaphone Man" can't bog down the sheer joy that overwhelms the album. "Horror With Eyeballs" is a carnival ride of roller coaster proportions, buoyed by a jumpy vocal melody and unexpected chord changes that evoke feelings of cheerful, rosy-cheeked intoxication. "Thinking in Reverse" is the most obvious example of Paul Mac's dance music roots, as it drives a pounding beat into the listener's skull, a procedure made far less painful by more of those exquisite vocal harmonies. The duo even goes so far as to employ a children's choir to sing/yell the parenthesized portion of "Young Man, Old Man (You Ain't Better Than the Rest)".
There was never any doubt concerning Johns’ musical competence and his deftness in constructing a fine tune but here as one half of The Dissociatives, pushing his own artistic boundaries with a vastly detailed electronic backdrop, he has come into his own. Crafting ten songs that often appear to blend seamlessly into the next track, only discernable by a different killer chorus or maybe a new trick sewn into the hem and tucked underneath what you might hear on the first listen. Understand that there is no filler.
When you talk of recent albums where a band has made the attempt to “go electronic” the undeniable standout record is Radiohead’s 'Kid A' and this bears a weak resemblance, leaning further towards the lilting pop sensibilities of Scott Weiland’s '12 Bar Blues' and, self-explanatorily, an organic progression from Diorama from Silverchair. Influences seem to include also anywhere from LSD tripping-era Beatles to the aforementioned Brian Wilson, with maybe some Pink Floyd thrown in for good measure.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about The Dissociatives is what they can do without the crutch of lyrics, particularly on the just sugary enough to be beautiful sunny day anthem that is "Lifting the Veil from the Braille". Nonsensical title aside, it's the most beautiful thing to be heard on The Dissociatives, as Johns' whistling, handclaps, and an unexpected guitar solo all somehow combine to form a seamless trip into a world of puffy clouds and fluffy bunnies.
It suddenly seems that Diorama, Silverchair's most recent longplayer, is both a great album and a warmup for The Dissociatives. Not only did that album mark Silverchair's own evolution into pop territory, Paul Mac was even featured on six of that album's 11 tracks doing keyboard work. And it's not as if The Dissociatives doesn't rock at all -- "Somewhere Down the Barrel" is one of the most effective rock tunes I've heard all year, exceedingly straight-up happy in its guitar-heavy instrumentation, if not in its lyrics. Ultimately, The Dissociatives lets us off gently and quietly, imploring us to "Sleep well tonight".I'm sure that'll be easy enough once I get these damn great songs out of my head. Seriously, if everyone in the world could listen to these songs, we'd have world peace without a doubt.
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