Search - Disclaimer :: The Airbag's Lipstick Kiss

In the tradition of great break-up albums like Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Beck's Sea Change, Sugar's Copper Blue, and Of Montreal's The Bedside Drama- A Petite Tragedy comes The Airbag's Lipstick Kiss, the first commercially available release from Detroit one-man band Disclaimer. After getting dumped in 2002, multi-instrumentalist Chris Willie Williams turned to his home studio to help him work through the difficult process of piecing his shattered life back together. ("Had I turned to a professional therapist instead, I probably could've saved myself about nine months of anguish and $800 or so that I spent on alcohol," Willie quips!) Willie's near-suicidal heartbreak is the indie-rock connoisseur's gain, however, because the 11 ruminations on loss that make up Airbag are bursting with enough naked emotion, eloquent observations, and dark humor to act as a catharsis to anyone who's ever loved and lost. Check out the frothing rebuke "You Ruined Everything," for example, which turns the comically blunt phrase "I got screwed" into a chillingly effective hook, or the whispered acoustic pop of "Generic Shoulder Blade Tattoo," whose delicacy is contrasted by truly twisted lyrics about realizing love is an illusion. Yes, all love. Astonishingly, the music on Airbag matches the lyrics every step of the way. Mashing together elements of indie rock, electronica, funk, punk, new wave, and the music of suspicious non-America nations, Willie comes up with a sound unlike any other home-recording project you've ever heard. Harsh yet vulnerable, catchy yet wholly original, the album sustains a consistent, driving momentum, refusing to collapse into an inert heap even considering the bleakness of its subject matter. The songs have drawn comparisons to everyone from Radiohead to XTC to Kraftwerk, and Disclaimer's arrangements display not only an ear for unique sounds and chord progressions, but an attention to detail that lends every tune a different- yet always fully-realized- approach. (And listen for newcomer Joe Hinchcliffe contributing angelic vocals to the otherwise blistering noisefest "Please Pardon Our Progress!!!") Disclaimer shanghais the listener on an intense, 40-minute journey to the depths of despair, rage, jealousy, hopelessness, confusion, unrelenting pain, and desperation that inevitably accompany a broken heart. But in a fun way.