Last night, I went to a hardcore show in a crowded basement on a Monday night in South Bend, Indiana (like…a surprisingly crowded basement. And everybody showed up before the first band and stayed the whole time??? It was nuts).
And among a lineup of heavy riffing, mosh pitting, passionate hardcore, Crafter from Massachusetts stood far above the rest.
Before Fugazi became the best punk band in the world, and before Embrace essentially invented post-hardcore, Ian MacKaye fronted what may be the single most iconic hardcore band of all time.
This 1984 release compiles the seminal straight edge band’s blistering first two EPs into a single 12″, and those songs are just as visceral and frantic as they were in the early 80s.
Few groups have as varied a discography as mewithoutYou. They’ve forged a musical niche for themselves that is as diverse as it is consistent. Their records have run the gamut from blistering post-hardcore to intense indie rock to charming folk.
But looking back across eighteen years and seven albums, it can be easy to forget that mewithoutYou (whispers) sorta started out as a joke.
For all of its simplicity, there’s something about punk that’s just slightly inaccessible.
If it keeps too close to the formula, it’s derivative. If it strays too far, or even if it has the right sonics but the wrong attitude, it’s a sell out.
Even if a band captures all of the fury and wrath of punk live, capturing that energy on record is as difficult capturing lightning in a jar.
But nobody must have told METZ.
Glassjaw has always been a bit of an outlier.
While the early 2000s Long Island punk scene was split between witty, weepy emo kids and muscle-bound hardcore tuff-guys, Glassjaw was a different beast entirely. Their ferocity and pop sensibility were never at odds with one another.
Jorden Dreyers, lead singer of La Dispute, is a bit of an enigma. He masquerades as a hardcore frontman, thrashing across the stage as he screams his lungs out.
In actuality, he’s a writer, through and through, showing more kinship with Ernest Hemingway than Henry Rollins.
In the great scheme of music history, it’s near impossible to talk about La Dispute without mentioning mewithoutYou. And I’m as guilty as anyone in that regard—mewithoutYou has been my favorite band for around thirteen years, and they were the first band to mix hardcore conventions and spoken-word (shouted-word?) vocals that La Dispute also uses.
It was this very relationship that kept me from La Dispute. I dismissed them as derivative—runners-up that sought to usurp of the throne mewithoutYou abdicated when they had their folky phase.
But then, I actually started listening to La Dispute. And brother, they don’t deserve my dismissal.
I am a very late arrival to the Black Flag fan club, and I am kicking myself for it. In high school, I was all over the Drive-Thru, Victory, Tooth & Nail, Dischord, and Kung Fu records catalogues, not realizing that almost every single one of the bands I had on repeat had cut their teeth listening to Black Flag.
And this record is truly worthy of its following.
For most of my life, The Argument has been my favorite Fugazi album. And while that position has been threatened as I trudge deeper into their catalogue (I’m looking at you, Kill Taker), The Argument remains their most singular and refined statement.
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From what I understand, anytime Steve Albini records something, the band is unhappy with the result and decides to change it (see: In Utero). In on the Kill Taker went through this process, and I’m glad they did, because this entire record is unmistakably Fugazi, and I would’ve hated for it to have sounded like someone besides Fugazi playing the songs. Continue reading