Lime Lizard Review
Fugazi, In On The Kill Taker (Dischord) 9+
The notoriously picky and fastidious Steve Albini was heard last year claiming that there were only three groups in the whole of America worth the vinyl or plastic they were pressed on -- Slint, The Jesus Lizard, and Fugazi. When asked to elaborate, he predicted that Fugazi would one day make a record that would blow everyone's socks off, and make that difficult transition from live fury onto recording-tape. "One Day" just happened to arrive a good deal sooner than expected. In On The Kill Taker is a real tour de force, somehow managing to combine their increasing obliqueness and experimentalism with their by-now patented steamroller rock dynamic, to be simultaneously obscure and in-your-face, ragingly modernist and ferociously direct. The only comparable record from an act of this size and stature in recent weeks has been PJ Harvey's Rid Of Me, though Fugazi are far more dissonant, far less musically and emotionally direct than Polly.
A band like Big Black had almost exactly the same uncompromising independence and attitude towards the record industry, but were more noted for their music. Fugazi have always been more famed for their politics, their label, Dischord, their refusal to do pres, their status as Washington, DC scene prime-movers and Godfathers to Riot Grrrl, and never for their music. True to the stereotype of a soc-called political act, their music has always appeared secondary, yet it's shocking, on listening to any of their records, just how unobtrusive their politics actually are. Indeed, to casually listen to Kill Taker, you could be forgiven for wondering how on earth Fugazi ever got their political reputation at all. Barring "Smallpox Champion," a song about the decimation of Native Americans by infected blankets given as "gifts" by the Founding fathers, every song here is skewed, lyrically indirect. What is immediately obvious about Kill Taker is just how immensely powerful an album it is.
An alternative culture raised on visions of excess and folk-memories of classic rock 'n' Roll debauchery isn't going to take a shine to a group of four clean-cut and healthy-living young men who don't drink, smoke or take drugs. Unlike Sonic Youth, say, you can't live out your rock fantasies through Fugazi. They can't be genuine innovators, says the script; they don't do enough acid/suffer enough social distress to qualify as such. Never mind that this understanding of creativity is based on two flawed models of inspiration (stimulants/repression), it's the persistent downgrading of this band I'm interested in. If Fugazi were merely politically correct, worthy-but-dull, we could happily ignore them and the music, but we can't. There was always something unique and off-centre about them -- even if it was just the idea of dub-rock without the dope, the straightedge reggae they practiced on their first two EPs -- but songs like "Cassavetes" and "Rend It" are incredible, like a skeletal equivalent to Sonic Youth, all bony and gnarly rather than boundary less and whorled. Indeed, Fugazi are oftentimes like a black-and-white art print to Sonic Youth's lackadaisical TV technicolour, their innovations sharper-focused. There's endless amounts of stray noise and frazzled solos furiously flying off the dual-guitar attack, often, as on the dirgey "Instrument" and the more hardcore "Great Cop" turning into a stroboscopic Big Black sequence of chinks, gouges and chiming feedback. "23 Beats Off" showcases their incredible understanding of dynamics, the musicians applying themselves to the material to get that loud/quiet effect without needing the engineer to turn the volume knob up for them. It's a slow chant, MacKaye's wail rising over a raw-as-fuck arpeggio, the song ending like Caspar Brotzmann in a tone soup of feedback, an amp bath of distress signals. "Cassavetes" is bandy-legged funk, the guitar exploding in your head like a retina-burning flare of white light, while "Walken's Syndrome" is as cataclysmic as Rapeman or The Jesus Lizard. Throughout, it's a broken, strung-together album, full of abrupt stops and starts, inexplicable pauses and re-entries, drone/dawdle builds and crazy shifts in pitch. Yet song and lyricism, however fragmented and melancholically interrupted, are both forcefully and deliberately drawn out into achingly lovely pop melodies. Fugazi deny you the pleasure of pop-song endings and conventional verse/chorus structures, but the loan you have to make in time, to make sense of their oddness is more than repaid with interest.
The Jesus Lizard, Slint, PJ Harvey and Shudder To Think have all released albums in the past two years that have widened rock's vocabulary immeasurably, but only Fugazi have headlined and sold out a 4,000 seat venue. Unlikely figureheads, Fugazi are also showing the way beyond the narrow, pinched shadow of the overrated Sonic Youth. Who else is combining populism and progressive intent to better effect?
-- Nick Terry
