Over 12 years and 7 critically acclaimed albums, ambient pop-rock
collective
Blow Up Hollywood has created an expansive and adventurous
body of work that manages to be both highly emotionally charged and
majestically anonymous. Helmed by Steve Messina, and backed by trusted
friends and collaborators, Blow Up Hollywood has put its distinct
fingerprint on warped Americana, dark wave, post rock, noise, jazz,
classical, freak folk, and any other music medium they felt like
inhabiting. But when Messina’s personal life became painfully complex,
he stepped out front and crafted the most direct and vulnerable album in
Blow Up Hollywood’s career, the stunning,
Blue Sky Blond.
“This one is from my heart. It’s more personal than any record I’ve
made,” Steve Messina reveals. “While making it, I went through a time
where I never felt more alone. Life was a big mystery, everything felt
so uncertain. I didn’t even think I was going to make music anymore. I
felt like someone took an eraser and wiped away the board with the
intricate mathematical equation that was my life.”
Blow Up Hollywood was founded in 2001 as a middle finger to the music
business and pop conformity. Restlessly creative, the band explored the
musical equivalent of art house films and literary fiction with a
chameleon-like tendency to authentically infiltrate a myriad of music
idioms. The band’s debut was written during a freewheeling 3-week
retreat with Messina and friends ensconced in a beach house in West
Hampton, New York. The band went on to garner acclaim from indie
tastemakers and a dedicated cult following. Blow Up Hollywood’s most
popular release was the concept album
The Diaries of Private Henry Hill.
The record was based on the journal entries of a young, deceased
soldier from the Iraq war. The album won the group high praise and
greatly expanded its profile, culminating with a feature on NPR’s
All Things Considered, and landing their song
WMD on the compilation CD,
Body of War, along side such artists as Neil Young, Pearl Jam, Roger Waters, and Bob Dylan.
Messina illustrated his eloquence with poignant confessional writing on
The Diaries of Private Henry Hill. With
Blue Sky Blond,
he flips through his own diaries and offers a stark survey of his own
battles. The album is rife with imagery of oceans and deserts, conveying
a vastness and all-encompassing emptiness with titles like “Throw Me A
Line,” “Desert Rose,” and “Waiting For My Ship To Come.” “Throw Me A
Line” gracefully unfolds with subtle, breathtaking textures and a
spacious propulsive quality that’s both comforting and disquieting. The
airy, pastoral beauty of “Desert Rose” is in sweet contrast to its
message of the fragility of life’s stability. “That song is about
getting so caught up in our little world and then something else
suddenly takes over and you lose your solid ground,” Messina says. The
uplifting and soulfully cleansing “Shine” is an emotional life raft on
the album, providing a gospel-like reassurance that everything will be
okay.
As a powerful counterpoint to the shivery and lonely feelings Messina
was wading through inside, the group of musicians around him gave a
supportive and emotionally grounded environment for his songs. During
the making of the album, he found his collective had become a band. “I
felt support around me, it felt like they had my back,” Messina says.
Blow Up Hollywood is officially Steve Messina, vocals, acoustic guitar;
Thad Debrock, electric guitar, pedal steel, keyboards; Teddy Kumpel,
electric guitar; Steve Bonacio, bass; Dave Diamond, drums; Harvey Jones,
piano, keyboards; Nadia Ackerman, vocals; and Anthea White, vocals.
“I feel so much better now, the whole world looks different,” Messina
says, assessing his emotional landscape in the wake of finishing
Blue Sky Blond.
“You know, Blow Up Hollywood is my sanctuary. I don’t think about money
or my career; I do this because I have to do it, it’s a catharsis. This
is who I am.
Discipline's style and genre has been variously described. The Detroit News describes them as an "alternative band."
[17] However, the progressive rock website ProgArchives.com classifies
Discipline as
Symphonic prog.
[18]
Doug Levy in Detroit's South End newspaper writes of Discipline, "this
is not some kind of over-the-top theatrical rock troupe of sorts as much
as it is a welcome merging of both art and tightly-knit (hence the
name) modern rock."
[19]
John Collinge, publisher of Progression Magazine, writes "Discipline’s
music demands focused attention–preferably with headphones and lyric
booklet, at least on the first spin. Once you’ve locked into Parmenter’s
vibe, strong melodies and gloriously edgy accompaniment seal the
deal.".
[20][21]
Mike Ostrich of ProgScape Radio says this about the band's musical
style: "The band isn't interested in flashy solos, the song is the most
important thing - not too much, not too little. There's not one band
member who doesn't bring out the best in the others. Bouda's guitar
playing enhances Kennedy's bass, which influences Dzendzel's drums,
which only strengthens Parmenter's keyboards and vocals."
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