Category: Pop Culture Noise

Twenty, thirty years from now, when the story of Fugazi is written by smarter people than me, they will probably point at “The Argument” as their crowning achievement, the culmination of their evolution as a band and the pinnacle of what they could do.  That would be hard to argue with.

I point to this: I had a friend who absolutely hated Fugazi, but loved this album.  This was Fugazi at a different level.  This was a band that produced “Red Medicine” and came through “End Hits” and ended up here.

This was a focused band.  The opening lets you know that this is going to be a journey.  “Cashout” is all about the vocals and a noise rock chorus that would make no sense coming from anyone else.

The verse on “Full Disclosure” has so much urgency you have no choice but to get swept up in it as it pulls you into a surprisingly poppy chorus, the likes of which would feel right at home on the alternative top 40.  Even crazier is the outro that follows the last chorus, like something ripped from 90s radio, as if Fugazi are finally acknowledging all their contemporaries.  Of course, they follow that section up with some good old fashion punk rock noise, a reminder that they cannot be pigeonholed.

“Epic Problem” is Ian McKaye’s vocal stylings at their best.  The beauty is that he makes the lyrics a part of the song, a part of the actual structure of the music.  It helps that the music is great, with yet another 90s inspired section in the middle (I should probably point out that this album came out in 2001).  And then we get the outro, which is something right off of “13 Songs” with a little “Repeater” thrown in to finish it off. It’s a little bit sing song, a little bit head bopping, and more upbeat than you would have expected given the beginning of the song.

Remember those things I said before about Guy’s guitar style?  Welcome to “Life and Limb.”  It’s already a great song, but then you get to the center with this wonderful, quirky guitar solo over straight up pop music.  We come back to the moody stuff, of course, but that center section makes the rest even better.

You may have noticed a trend developing. There’s an awful lot of pop music on this record, but it very often undercut, either by wedging it into more jagged parts or by layering it with discordant guitars. It’s the perfect give and take for Fugazi, something that took them 7 albums to get to. These songs have the straight forward core of the best “In on the Killtaker” tracks with all the experimentation of the strangest “End Hits” songs.

When Joe Lally is singing you have an idea of the type of song you’re going to get. “The Kill” fits right in.  It’s ethereal, as most Lally sung songs are.  The song never explodes, never builds to anything, but it’s a constant, mellow groove with a nice change from the verse to the chorus.

Let’s just get right to it with “Strangelight” — as interesting as the song is, it’s what happens at the 4 minute mark that truly makes it great.  I don’t even know what that note-y part is being played on (guitar doubled with keyboards? With a violin?) and the changing piano chords make it sound ominous.  It’s wonderfully dissonant, yet darkly triumphant.

This could be the Fugazi album with the most mood changing moments in songs.  In this case, I’m talking about McKaye’s vocals in “Oh,” which is mostly sung by Guy.  But read back over my comments on the other songs on this album and the shift in tone is a regular theme.  Interestingly enough, the shift seems to frequently come at the end, a fitting microcosm of Fugazi’s library of work.

“Ex-Spectator” has a wonderful, double drum opening.  The verse is sparse and the chorus is full and powerful, driven by McKaye’s vocals.  What’s really interesting about this song is how it almost seems like an answer to “Public Witness Program” from “In on the Killtaker.”  Both songs seem to be about the dangers of not getting involved, but this song pulls the character forward.  The public witness can’t stand on the sidelines any longer.

“Nightshop” is probably the clearest use of keyboards we’ve seen from Fugazi (at the two and a half minute mark), and they’re used to excellent effect. We also treated to some acoustic guitars, as if the band decided they were going to jam all their non-traditional (for them) instruments into one song. This song makes me long for a new Fugazi record because it suggests that they were just beginning to experiment.

And now for “The Argument,” theoretically the last song on the last Fugazi album.  It’s everything you could hope for from a final song.  McKaye has said that the song is about how he will always be against war.  But he frames it as being a bigger argument that’s generally not made.  The song itself would suggest that McKaye is calling out those who get bogged down in the small debates, who never see the forest from the trees: “that some punk could argue some moral abc’s/when people are catching what bombers release.”  It’s an argument against the myopic.

It’s also the perfect example of the evolution of the band.  The vocals are perhaps the pinnacle of what McKaye has managed to do over the years.  The song is fairly quiet and pretty, with a quixotic keyboard break.  And then it explodes.  It explodes in exactly the way you would want a Fugazi song to end, with heavy guitars from McKaye and a dynamic, catchy note-y part from Guy.  It’s damn near perfect.

And then it’s over.

If this is the last we ever hear from Fugazi….well, I’ll still be sad about that, but they went out on a high note.

It became fitting that Fugazi released an album of outtakes (and a documentary) when they did.  The band had already gone their separate ways and were making music together less and less frequently.  The writing should have been on the wall.

It’s hard to call “Instrument” an actual album, as it’s not.  It is exactly what it sold itself as: a collection of outtakes.  Sadly, most of those outtakes aren’t particularly interesting.  It actually goes a long way to confirming that the band is the bunch of lo-fi, regular guys that everyone thought they were.  “Instrument” is filled with the type of junk that is being recorded in every basement in America.  This is Fugazi showing us that they’re no different.  They record every single thing they think sounds good, too, even if they realize after the fact that it’s crap.

In their defense, there are some gems on this record, some bits and pieces that I would have loved to have seen as complete songs.

The “Apreggiator” demo is interesting given how much they increased the speed for the recorded version, which was a smart decision.

“Afterthought” introduces us to Fugazi using keyboards and it become apparent over the course of this album that they could have done great things with keyboards. Why they never did more, I don’t know, but between this song and “Little Debbie” it was clear they could have produced something great incorporating keyboards.

“Trio’s” is darkly atmospheric, more so than anything else the band has recorded, which is probably part of the reason it never materialized on an album.  “Turkish Disco” is the first track that sounds like a relatively complete song, so much so that I wonder why it didn’t end up on another record.

The question about keyboards is also applicable to piano, an instrument Fugazi used as window dressing in the past, but never as the focus for a song. “I’m So Tired” suggests that they should have placed it front and center for at least a few tracks.

The demos for “Rend It,” “Closed Caption,” and “Guilford Fall” are interesting enough for big Fugazi fans. The “Rend It” demo is great given how drastically the song changed over time.

“Swingset” has a fantastic verse, but the attempt at a chorus makes it clear why it’s an outtake.

“Shaken All Over” is basically just a recording of Joe playing a bass line.

“Slow Crostic” is exactly what it says: a slower version of “Caustic Acrostic.” This particular track is noteworthy because it’s the basis for a song on the Wugazi album, a mash-up of Fugazi and the Wu-Tang Clan.

In the end, “Instrument” is a collection of songs for only the biggest of Fugazi fans.  It’s great as a glimpse inside the creative process, but doesn’t offer much beyond that. It is, to be honest, an odd duck of a release. Nothing about this record suggests that it needed to see the light of day, yet here we are.

It really just kind of mucks up the Fugazi library.

“End Hits” deserves the shit that it’s gotten from Fugazi fans, but that doesn’t stop it from being a great album.

If “Red Medicine” was the beginning of a new era for the band, “End Hits” is them pushing the envelope of that era, seeing what the limits are.  It’s as if they were pleasantly surprised by the music they discovered they could make on the last album and now they were cautiously seeing if it actually suited them.

“Break” is the perfect first song for this album.  It’s got a classic Fugazi groove layered underneath this relaxed, almost jazzy clean guitar part — and is that piano I hear?  It sure is, this time used as an instrument and not as a vehicle for noise (as with the last album).  McKaye’s vocals in the center, when it’s just him and a single guitar, are strange, but still fit the song perfectly.

Follow that up with classic Guy rocker, “Place Position” and you’ve got the makings of a fantastic new school Fugazi record, albeit one that seems definable.  But you’d be getting ahead of yourself.

Joe Lally always seems to sing on the more atmospheric songs and “Recap Modotti” is no exception.  We’re venturing into stoner rock territory here, which is shocking, given that none of them are stoners.  Even the teases of a build up ultimately don’t pay off.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not something you’d expect from Fugazi…which is something you should get used to over the course of this album.

And while we’re on the subject of weird song arrangements, here comes “No Surprises.”

But then, like the parting of rain clouds, we get “Five Corporations,” a fantastic example of how new Fugazi can still rock out like old Fugazi, but with more complex music.  And we’ve even got that trademark Fugazi anti-establishment going on.  Seriously, that tempo change for the chorus is unbelievable, particularly when it’s followed by just bass, drums, and vocals for the verse.

“Caustic Acrostic” is a great song, a modern day Guy-style Fugazi song.  You could tell, since Red Medicine, that Guy had gotten away from playing chords.  I have to think that was a response to Ian McKaye’s style of guitar, whose riffs and palm muting were more often a hammer than a scalpel. Guy’s style evolved out of necessity and it made them a better band.

Things get weird again after “Caustic Acrostic.”  “Close Caption” and “Floating Boy” are spacey, atmospheric jams that push the boundaries of traditional song structure.  They’re glorious little oddities amongst the larger Fugazi library, wonderful experiments by a band that is no longer bound by a static sound. Most Fugazi fans I know hate these songs.

We bounce back with “Foreman’s Dog,” which is surprisingly straight forward for this album.  It kind of reminds me of something to be found on “Steady Diet,” yet with a better sound.  And speaking of straight forward, then we get “Arpeggiator” which is ostensibly just a scale, but somehow Fugazi makes it great.

“Guilford Falls” feels like another new school Guy song, with an initial hook that is made up of picking each string rather than strumming chords.  It’s also got the classic Fugazi “introduce a new part by having just one guitar play it, then everyone eventually kicks in.”  Again, it’s a complex song with layered guitars and an interesting structure, but it still has some classic Fugazi qualities.

 And then we hit “Pink Frosty.”  It is possible there’s no more maligned Fugazi song in their catalog than “Pink Frosty.”  It’s understandable: it’s barely a song.  It sounds like someone took some drugs and mixed an outtake for the album.  It’s completely insubstantial, which would be much less of a problem if it weren’t more than four minutes long.

It’s hard to figure out what Fugazi is doing here. They obviously liked “Pink Frosty” enough to put it on the album, but does it have a thematic purpose? Is it meant as a palate cleanser before the big finale? The album is 13 tracks long so it’s not like this needed to be on there to fill it out. Or was this an attempt at creating a balance with their first record, just in case this ended up being their last?

The last song on “End Hits,” “F/D” is bizarre, but it’s only bizarre because it appears to be two completely different songs smashed on to the same track.  What’s really interesting about it is that it’s a clear breakdown between an Ian song and a Guy song.  The very quiet opening features a straightforward chord progression with McKaye’s rhyme-y punk rock vocals and an up tempo drum beat.  But there’s a break and then the Guy song comes crashing down, full of dramatic guitar and vocals.  Yet for the twangy, high end guitar part, buried underneath it is a simple, driving guitar part that is, again, classic McKaye.

After a few seconds of silence when the song ends, we get outtakes from “No Surprises,” like a reminder that this album was all about experimentation.

“Red Medicine” was a much more together album, but “End Hits” was a clear bridge to where Fugazi was headed. This record felt like Fugazi preparing for the end, but not quite there yet.

“Red Medicine” was the first Fugazi album I ever bought when it was released.  Up until this point, I’d been playing catch up.

There’s a decent argument to be made that this is their best album.  It’s certainly the first salvo of the band taking their songwriting to the next level.

Right from the start, something is different.  There’s the energy we’re used to.  It opens with some crazy noise, but that’s not too surprising.  But are those…clean guitars?  And it’s an up tempo song?  And is that a guitar solo (loosely defined, sure)?

And it’s like Fugazi knows this might seem strange to you and they challenge you right in the song.  “I’ve got a question/how/do you like me?”

We are Fugazi and we’ve taken it to the next level!

“Bed for the Scraping” is classic Fugazi with a new Fugazi twist.  Groovestastic bass/drums, Ian McKaye grunting, but the guitar work is sharper and more layered than what we’ve seen before.  This is a new kind of punk rock anthem, but still has all the old school energy.

“Latest Disgrace” says “remember those weird noises at the beginning of this album?  That was just a taste.”  The first half of the song is bizarre, as if the guitars have been tuned differently, and everything besides Guy’s voice is muted, particularly the barely there drums by Canty.  Oh, and Guy goes falsetto at one point.  But then it all collapses into the kind of straight forward rocking we expect of Fugazi, it just has more power now, because it’s got new context.

“Birthday Pony” seems like it should sound like an old Fugazi song, but the production has changed it.  The palm muting, the big chorus — this should be “13 Songs” era Fugazi.  But the big chorus isn’t just big this time around, it’s full.  There’s a texture there that we haven’t seen before.  And you’re beginning to realize that Ian and Guy are pushing each other when it comes to vocals.  They’re going into uncharted territory.

“Forensic Scene” is an instant classic.

And then we hit the weird stuff.

“Combination Lock” is probably the most “jam” feeling instrumental Fugazi has ever released.  It feels like a song they’re just jamming on one day.  “Fell, Destroyed” could be a June of ’44 song.  “By You” is a crazy wall of sound with these mellow vocals by Joe Lally.  “Version” is yet another instrumental, but this one features a clarinet…oh, and the bass line from another song on the album (which we haven’t gotten to yet).  It’s almost like an undecipherable remix of a song that comes later on the record.

We return to more straight forward, yet no less creative, Fugazi rock with “Target.”  Yet again, though, there are guitars that are strikingly not distorted, and yet the urgency of the music hasn’t lessened at all.  There’s even the classic Fugazi palm mute a part by itself, then play it full blown with the rest of the band, yet it all feels much bigger.  Just listen to the guitars on “Back to Base.”  We’ve never heard anything like that on a Fugazi record.  It’s epic.  And “Downed City” is much the same, just more frenetic.  It’s wonderful.

I love “Long Distance Runner.”  In a lot of ways, it epitomizes “new” Fugazi.  We’ve got this full, kind of notey, two guitar bit, then some bass/drums action (with appropriate level of guitar noise), and a spectacular level of loud quiet loud.  It’s also works as the perfect metaphor for the band: they are long distance runners.  They are constantly moving forward.  They have yet to get stuck because they can’t stop.  “And if I stop to catch my breath/might catch a piece of death.”  No two Fugazi albums have sounded the same.  No two Fugazi albums will ever sound the same, because they are still running.

I’m convinced that one of the members of Fugazi has synesthesia, because I have synesthesia and the majority of these songs are red to me (“Birthday Pony” and “Do You Like Me” are yellow).  I think one of them saw the same thing when it came time to name this album.

At this point, “Red Medicine” became my second favorite Fugazi record. I don’t know that anything could dethrone “Repeater” from the top spot. “Red Medicine” would ultimately fall to #3 on my list, though, when it was all said in done. But which of the remaining records knocked it down?

If there was a darkness about “Steady Diet of Nothing,” “In on the Killtaker” was Fugazi exorcising it.

“Killtaker” alternately features the most aggressive and, up until that point, the most beautiful songs Fugazi had recorded.

If you were unsure what you were going to get after “Steady Diet of Nothing,” you knew from the first song, “Facet Squared.”  Open with some playful guitar noises, lay down a nice bass/drums groove, then explode into a driving, closed fist punch of a song, complete with McKaye’s forceful, grunting vocals.  This is a Fugazi that will not be ignored, something that was easy to do on the last album.  They’re not holding back this time around.

Still unsure?  Welcome to “Public Witness Program.”  They’re in full on attack mode now, yet the vocals are only getting more and more catchy.  The guitar interplay at around the 1:15 mark lets you know that this energy isn’t for show; you’re going to get Fugazi’s all on this record, and nothing less.

Then we get the first wild card: “Returning the Screw.”  It’s quiet and sparse, but McKaye’s vocals tell you that there’s something boiling underneath the surface.  And when it explodes — and does it ever — you realize that the energy from the first two songs is still here, just less frantic and more powerful.

I could go on and on about “Smallpox Champion,” but it would just be sad because I love the hell out of that song.  When they move into the second half of the song, I get goosebumps.

And that’s just the first four songs!  I haven’t even gotten to “Rend It,” “Sweet and Low,” “Walken’s Syndrome,” or, perhaps the best song on the album and the best “slow” song Fugazi has ever recorded, “Last Chance for a Slow Dance.”  This was clearly a band on a mission.

From what I remember, “In on the Killtaker” was a point of contention with Fugazi fans. There was a very clear divide between those who loved it and those who hated it. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard a cogent argument from those who hated it beyond “It’s not Fugazi,” which makes no sense.

Is this record a change of pace for the band? I guess. But it’s clearly a part of their evolution. You don’t get to “In on the Killtaker” without the three albums that came before it.

I think this was the Rubicon for Fugazi. This was the record where they discovered their sound. That’s not to say they didn’t move forward on future records because they most certainly did, but this is the album that got them to that very Fugazi place, a combination of dynamics, intricate song writing, that incredible rhythm section, a phenomenal duel guitar attack, and some next level vocals from both singers.

Stylistically, this could be called the “outro” album, as this is when Fugazi really found their “outro” game. This would become a calling card for the band: a brand new part to a song that only comes at the end. The aforementioned “Smallpox Champion” is a great example of this, but a lot of the songs on this record have them.

This is perhaps the first Fugazi record that fully embraced the “loud quiet loud” style, although it’s admittedly modified to better suit the band. Still, the dynamics on this record are certainly amplified. If you really wanted to reduce this album, you could call it “emo,” although it’s really not.

“Last Chance for a Slow Dance” was probably the song that created the divide among Fugazi fans, although I don’t know that for certain. Every Fugazi album has a “slow” song, so to speak, from “Promises” to “Shut the Door” to “Long Division.” All three of those are fairly unconventional as far as “slow” songs are concerned. “Last Chance” is much more produced and, yes, Guy Picciotto’s vocals do, indeed, make it sound more “emo.” Those Fugazi fans who didn’t like it were not going to find much joy going forward, either.

It’s interesting to note the titles of the four albums I’ve talked about so far.  “13 Songs” is almost tongue in cheek, like a refusal to actually name the collection of songs from two EPs.  In Fugazi’s mind, it wasn’t even an album at all, but a compilation.

Apparently, “Repeater” wasn’t just named after the song, but was a play on the Beatles “Revolver,” since a revolver is both a type of gun and a recorder — the same as a repeater.  What better sign is there of a band embracing their creative energies than by dropping an allusion like that?

But the playfulness of the first two albums disappears and we get “Steady Diet of Nothing.”  Not exactly a shiny, happy album name.  And then what comes after that?  “In on the Killtaker.”  It’s like depression and aggression, back to back.

This was all a part of the evolution of Fugazi, and evolution that would grow by leaps in bounds on the next two records.

If I had any doubts about how great Fugazi was, those were removed when I heard the title track on “Repeater.”  The chorus is not remotely something you’d expect from anything resembling a punk band.  And that rhythm section?  Holy cow.  This was a band that clearly knew what they had in Joe Lally and Brendan Canty, and they knew enough to stay out of their way.

“Merchandise” and “Blueprint” could be the best back-to-back tracks on any Fugazi album. 

I got “Repeater” the summer of 1995, much of which I spent working two jobs. My mornings and afternoons were spent at a grocery store, my evenings were spent at a pizza place. While the pizza place was kind of cool and filled with other late teen/early 20s employees just looking to stay afloat and maybe afford some cheap beer, the grocery was one of a chain and felt very corporate.

I drove the delivery van for that grocery store. We had a bakery and there was a convenient store not far away that ordered fresh doughnuts every morning. Delivery was scheduled for 5:45AM (15 minutes before they opened). I woke up at 4:30AM for that job. There were days when I would work at that job until 2PM and then go to the job at the pizza place at 4PM, getting off work well after midnight. Thankfully, I managed to schedule shifts so that I never worked at the pizza place the night before I worked at the grocery store, although that certainly wasn’t the case at the start.

I listened to a lot of Fugazi that summer.

“Merchandise” became an anthem for me, the last song I would listen to before arriving at the grocery store. 

For as much as I love “Merchandise,” though, “Blueprint” quickly became my favorite song on the album. Yet another song with an anti-capitalism theme, “Blueprint” was less raging against the system and more feeling beaten down by the system. To this day, the ending gives me goosebumps.

And let’s not forget the driving “Greed,” which is ostensibly just two parts, yet still works, or the triumphant “Styrofoam.”  Is “Reprovisional” cheating a little bit?  Maybe, but it’s a great example of how the band had evolved in just two albums.  “Shut the Door” is a great follow-up to “Promises” from “13 Songs,” and is another step in the dynamic intensity Fugazi was quickly excelling at.

“Repeater” (the album) is also noteworthy because it’s the beginning of the duel guitar formation that would stick with them over the rest of their career.  Guy Picciotto quickly become an excellent song writer, and I think his influence on Ian McKaye pushed them both forward as guitarists.

“Repeater” was a big step forward from “13 Songs.” As much as enjoyed that first album, it had a specific sound, a lot of palm muting and guttural vocals. But “Repeater” was Fugazi’s statement record. “13 Songs” felt like a demo. “Repeater” was Fugazi making themselves known.

After two albums, I was hooked and I was prepared for “Steady Diet of Nothing” to move Fugazi even further forward.