Discus – To Relate To

Recorded and Mixed by Michael Macdonald at bim bom studios
Mastered by Alan Douches
Art & Design by Clare Byrne

Rewind as you might, but your ears didn’t deceive you: there is an Ed Sheeran reference in a Discus song. “I was on fire, in love with the shape of you,” reflects the narrator of “On Tour”, revealing himself to be a projected, mid-interview version of the English popstar. But here, he’s grown haunted by his own ubiquity: “That was such a major tune — but it’s hard to escape.” He stops short of a full confession, splitting off into interiority. If he “opens up, will it be too much?” How does he convey his isolation, especially when it’s a byproduct of extreme success?

It’s an unexpected premise to hang Discus’ breezy indie rock on, but in many ways it’s a proof of concept for To Relate To, the Chicago quintet’s sophomore LP. While their 2019 debut Something Has Happened was content to revel in the obscurity of similarly strange vignettes, To Relate To channels the same dauntless curiosity to search for a means of connection. The record is a collection of these exercises, borne from the recognition that almost any moment — an accident, a childhood memory, an athletic attempt at empathy — can serve as a touchstone for understanding. The more far-flung the character study, the more hard-won the surprising truth at its center — and the greater chance of catching one’s own reflection unawares. The hoodied teenage narrator of “Sixteen Stoned”, inebriated just enough to glimpse his own desire to be known, sums up the record’s ethos: “I’d like to relate to the ones around me,” he confesses, “but in a faceless way.”

Discus grew out of a long-kept creative partnership between brothers Jake and Paul Stolz, who began writing songs in their childhood basement in Oak Park, IL almost as soon as they learned to play instruments. The habit would serve as a method of keeping in touch despite years of changing circumstances: elder Paul left for college and abroad for a stint in the Peace Corps, younger Jake moved into the city and joined a handful of Chicago bands — all of whom wound up folding Paul into their ranks upon his stateside return. While Discus was formed in an effort to forge a distinct songwriting voice independent of their more widely collaborative contexts, the Stolzes’ other projects undoubtedly inform Discus’ identity: Pool Holograph’s artful angularity, Varsity’s love of pop and melody, and Central Heat Exchange’s wide-ranging emotional appeal all audibly influence the band’s approach.

This training, combined with a design sensibility culled from Jake’s work as a visual artist, allows Discus to both render immaculately considered musical worlds and upset their balance with calculated moments of unease. After all: projection is tricky work, memories are unreliable — the simulation tends to flicker. Discus’ songs respond in kind, tonally and lyrically twisting so each dreamlike atmosphere is palpably bordered with the uncanny: shuffling through the bossa nova of “O My Stars”, a doting mother contemplates her worth — resolving that she’ll reach her peak in the afterlife. Crashing opener “Not My Friend” finds Jake’s serpentine voice sounding akin to an under-the-breath muttering, the song’s screen-engrossed narrator failing to distinguish between a friend and a familiar face. Second single “Alignment, Misattributions”, which draws its title from Jake’s years spent as a technician in a neuroscience lab, investigates the mutations that can occur in the process of retrieving a memory – and the perils of relaying it to someone at a party. Just as often, the songs on To Relate To are a nonlinear sequence of images, a cutting room floor for the project of establishing a clear relationship to others. “I know the desire is strange,” sings Jake. “I promise my mind isn’t broken.”

As the Stolz brothers’ demos universally take the shape of cassette recordings, the live band — which includes drummer Nick Konkoli, clarinet / keys player and vocalist Sarah Clausen, and bassist Kevin Fairbairn — uses the constraints of lower fidelity as a playing notation for their full scale album-version counterparts, deftly keeping To Relate To’s margins intact across a diverse set of arrangements. It’s a straddling act that perfectly evokes the golden-era oughts indie of The Radio Dept, Broadcast, or The American Analog Set — bands with glittering digital stratospheres that were grounded in off-the-floor performances. And the project at large is nothing if not thorough — To Relate To also exists as an artifact of SUN-ROM, a spectral evil corporation in the expanded universe of Sunroom, the creative studio of Jake and partner (and album art designer) Clare Byrne. In the back half of the record, a warbled sample of a corporate relaxation tape pokes fun at the album’s pathos, recommending that the listener stares at the bridge of an intimidating person’s nose to dispel the anxiety of meeting their gaze. The sense of play is an important counterpart to the relational distress at the heart of To Relate To — it’s comical that the connection we seem to be built for is so unrelentingly difficult to manage, and no one is spared the challenge.

“There’s an acknowledgement — I don’t have to be a black box to myself and others,” Jake says, noting the world around’s invitation to gather data as a constant opportunity to discover one’s place within it. To be sure — results vary, experiment begets experiment, but To Relate To is a step towards understanding.

— Caleb Cordes