There are so many reference points for disco and they all tend to collide with and obscure each other when discussing its legacy. Do a little experiment, when you think of the word disco, what comes to mind first? Glossy pop singers? Big band funk? German studio experiments? They're all correct and also mutually exclusive. You can't mean them all when you talk about disco. What is inevitably meant when discussing the genre is one definition over the others, and yet, they are all qualifiedly disco. Your meaning is, therefore, entirely context-dependent. To a degree, this is how any discussion of genre or influence works, but it proves particularly true when it comes to disco. As an example, when I say that a band sounds like Blondie, a lot of (even most) people are going to think of Parallel Lines. That is unless you qualify it further with an elusion to "Heart of Glass." That qualifier will really throw a wrench in some people's gears, as it's almost TOO specific. That song was of a particular era, and that era will never be repeated. No punk band will ever attempt to make a straight-up, no cap, no camp, completely earnest disco track ever again. Right? Well, never say never. Flex TMG is an Oakland duo comprised, respectively, of Fake Fruit and Blues Lawyer players, Hannah D'amato and Rob Miller. And they're a punk band you have made a disco record. It's their debut and it's titled Whisper Swish. It would be tempting to simply slot this band in with other funky post-punk acts as a revival of ESG or Bush Tetras, but being obtuse and catchy is only half of Flex TMG's appeal, the other half of their appeal is that they genuinely make good body music- like a dressed-down form of Deee-Lite, or some early version of a Madison Avenue demo. Their truly the best of two worlds, a meeting at the intersection of sophisticated punk and clear-headed, DIY dance euphoria. For instance, "Hits The Right Way" has this orbital spiral that is strangely transportive, taking you to a place between '90s acid house drench and '80s club punk fallout as you tumble down a latter of layered grooves until to plop in the lap of the mother groove. "Sideways" has this late-night, public-access, sci-fi showcase vibe with its trouble-shooting bass chords and irradiated cosmic sound scans running in the background of quirked-up, jutting and jaunty topline melodies, while "Ghost" with its playful tin-timbre toms, cozy cresting textures, and big, scratchy, tom-cat guitars, will stretch and summersault in delight of your company, like a giant orange cat caressing between your shins in a figure eight pattern, begging to be fed and scratched behind the ears. And finally, there is "Come On Over (Bebé)," a slinky, Caribbean rhythm-drenched number with a hooky bass deployment that will wrap around your waist and pull you out under the spotlights to show off what you've got as if you were front row at a Donna Summer concert in 1977. Whisper Swish is an amazing amount of fun and a record that pulls power and influence from an often-overlooked dimension of disco's legacy. Whisper Swish isn't a secret you will want to keep to yourself, though. It's the kind you'll want to shout out to the whole neighborhood (preferably while carrying a boom box on your shoulder)!
Available on Domestic Departure.