Photo by Drew Reynolds

Even though a city-crippling blizzard hit two days prior, Chicago music fans weren’t phased enough by the mountains of snow to keep them from packing the Empty Bottle last Friday for local psych-garage rockers Disappears. The band obviously fed off the impressive show of fan dedication and kicked off a raucous, mesmerizing set with the fiery groove of “Supersition,” the opening track of their latest release, Guider.

Lead singer and guitarist Brian Case repeatedly bounced from stage to amplifier, Jonathan van Herik contorted his guitar lines into a combination of reverbed madness and warped wah-wah, bassist Damon Carruesco held down the low end with thick, fuzzy riffs and current tour drummer Steve Shelley, of Sonic Youth fame, kept the songs held together with a focused and aggressive backbeat.

After concluding with the 15-minute plus “Revisiting,” the crowd wouldn’t let up until the band ultimately returned for an encore. In the end, Guider’s unrelenting energy and power transitioned beautifully from stereo to the stage. Lucky for us, we had the opportunity to catch up with Disappears’ Brian Case before they bolted for Europe to talk about influences, Guider’s writing process, Steve Shelly and more.

LLP Disappears’ music, specifically on “Guider,” seems to be a very calculated combination of styles – garage, psychedelic, even trance or drone. What are the band’s collective influences?

Brian: We are influenced by so many things, both musical and not. I’d say we’re not as calculated as specific – we’re trying to focus on simple ideas and specific sounds. Delay, reverb, repetition. Finding the right combination of these is always good. I’d say bands like The Fall, Neu!, Velvet Underground. They are all definite reference points and sign posts when thinking or talking about music.

LLP When writing Guider, were the songs mostly fleshed out jams or does a single member come in with a specific idea from which you guys build off of?

Brian: Most of the songs come from a basic structure and vocal melody. From there we all decide on the best feel of the song and what kind of mood best suits it, and then jam it for a while and see where it goes. From there we try and eliminate the fat and strip it down to it’s most basic shape. Lots of editing.

LLP How did Disappears relationship with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth begin?

Brian: We have a mutual friend that took Steve to see us play. From there we ended up collaborating on a record together and keeping in touch, talking about the project off and on over the course of a year and just emailing about music or whatever. Kind of pen pals, I guess. When Graeme decided he was going to move, we asked Steve to play. He was into it and here we are.

Brian Case | Photo by Drew Reynolds

LLP Can you talk a little bit about the difference between playing with Shelley and your old drummer Graeme Gibson?

Brian: They are very different drummers for sure. Graeme is a harder hitter and way more immediate, his part would be worked out by the time we were done doing a song the first time through and would slowly evolve as we played it more. Steve takes more time with the tunes initially. He’s more open and will improvise within the structures more. It’s hard to say though as Steve hasn’t had too much time with us to really open up, but the new stuff we’ve been working on feels great so far. I’m excited to continue writing more. They are both incredible drummers, we’ve been really lucky in that respect.

LLP I read in the Chicago Tribune interview that you guys have already written about five new songs with Shelley. When can we expect to hear them?

Brian: Those songs are going to be available at shows as a tour only EP. Basically when we were rehearsing in Hoboken we ended up recording a set of new songs we’d been working on. The original idea was to do a live thing like we did with …Over the Rainbo, but we decided to focus on some of the newer stuff instead. It sounds great but they are basically the first time we’d ever really done those songs, changing the arrangements at the last second, deciding on specific parts. Some of those will definitely show up on our next record, but we play most of them live for now.