2 keepers
keeper avg .154
Following up Red Medicine (1995), Fugazi's most successful album, their penultimate one would be more oblique or experimental. Opening track "Break" has an aggressive, almost tremolo-picked guitar riff over correspondingly busy, polyrhythmic drums, making it more a technical feat than it is a song. As if in retort, Guy Picciotto's "Place Position"**** is straightforward , crowd-pleasing "Merchandise" (Repeater,1990) style rocker. In that familiar vein and with a scream-along chorus, the blazing rocker "Five Corporations"***** is one of their catchiest ever. The less-aggressive "Foreman's Dog" (the "loss of concentration" song") and "Guilford Fall" are the kind of late-90's emo with math-y riffs they pretty much invented, while "Caustic Acrostic" falls in-between.
For something completely different, much of this album is relatively sparse, at a restrained volume and tempo, and consequently experimental-sounding to various degrees. "Recap Modotti", "Closed Captioned", and "No Surprise" are relatively conventional if a little angular and subdued (as a side note the introduction of "No Surprise" is amazingly the main riff from Foo Fighters "X-Static"(1995) from three years earlier). But late in the album they start to reach farther out. "Floating Boy" has various guitar riffs and noise over Joe Lally's loping bass line, while I speculate the cheeky clanking bell may be where the emo "tink" came from (Braid for example loved to deploy it). The cavernous "Pink Frosty" is almost early Pink Floyd in its loose, collage-y structure, and is followed by the noise-rock "F/D," concluding the album. That leaves the driving instrumental "Arpeggiator," which despite being highly accessible isn't ultimately a unique achievement, just a tuneful collection of riffs that sound cool together.
Comments