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I’m doing a Fugazi album chronological listen just cause I haven’t for ages. I assume what I’m listening to here is Chad Clark’s (aka @beautypill) master. It really still sounds so fantastic this album.
I think if the production and general mix of this record wasn’t exactly as it is, I might not have got into the band so easily as I did.
There are plenty of concessions to production; a big meaty kick, the occasional ringing plate reverb on the snares, and tons of warm…
There are plenty of concessions to production; a big meaty kick, the occasional ringing plate reverb on the snares, and tons of warm…
…(but not thunderous) low end (thanks Chad), as well as various dropped-in vocal ad libs and doubles, but when I first began to listen to them around 2001-ish, it felt ‘live’ enough to me to provide a contrast with a lot of the contemporary guitar music that sloshed around me…
…which I felt had strayed so far from feeling like music *played by people* that I scarcely saw the point in listening to much of it.
It still feels like that to me now. It’s a ‘proper studio album’ in every way, but it absolutely *oozes* personality.
It still feels like that to me now. It’s a ‘proper studio album’ in every way, but it absolutely *oozes* personality.
In fact, I think I can trace my still firmly held principle of Personality and Conviction being the two greatest assets a vocalist can possess back to this album. Both vocalists (well, there are three in a way) in the band have that quality whereby the performance is delivered…
…absolutely *perfecty*, but without mapping onto a conventional 12-tone tuning system. Echoes of the hollering style of someone like Nick Cave, but far, far more relatable. When you consider that, at the time, youngsters like me were being served up music from bands like…
…Green Day, Blink 182, NOFX and evening gnarly *looking* bands like Rancid (all v good) who’d had their vocal performances stretched over a 12-tone cypher, with all the peaks and troughs personal to the vocalist nipped and tucked away, Fugazi were really…
…exactly the band I needed to hear, and I’m so delighted that I did.
Anyhoo, if you’re new to Fugazi, I think it’s probably best that, like me, you begin here. I don’t think it’s their pinnacle (I actually think, perhaps with the odd exception, they got consistently better at communicating their musical message) but it’s a really fantastic LP.
It’s also worth having a read along with the lyrics if you have the inclination. Ian MacKaye is one of the great American lyricists and, if you’ve fallen into the trap of buying that he’s shoving his ideas down your throat, the lyrics will quickly disabuse you of that idea.
