punk

Record #816: Bad Brains – Bad Brains (1982)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The conversations around the greatest punk band of all time are often focused in the rivalry between USA and the UK. Punks wax philosophical about The Ramones or The Clash, Black Flag or the Buzzcocks…(note: I’m intentionally omitting the band Virgin Records put together to reappropriate punk aesthetics).

One factor that’s not often brought up is that of race. True, there might not be too much to talk about there—for all its rebellion against the status quo, punk has always skewed heavily white. But for Bad Brains, whose legend demands that they’re mentioned in any conversation about important punk bands, their punk cred is tied intrinsically to their blackness, both in lyrical content and the way they were perceived in their early days.

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Record #810: Drive Like Jehu – Drive Like Jehu (1991)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

1991 has been called “The Year that Punk Broke.” The success of Nirvana’s Nevermind led record companies to make a mad dash to sign all the noisy, abrasive, energetic bands they could find, leading to some absolutely bizarre major label deals for bands like Melvins, Smashing Pumpkins, and Jawbox. DIY stalwarts Fugazi purportedly turned down multiple million-dollar deals.

One of the noisier bands to land one of those deals was Drive Like Jehu, whose sprawling math-rock/post-hardcore masterpiece Yank Crime was somehow released on Interscope.

But Interscope wouldn’t have been interested had it not been for the success of their self-titled debut, which lacks none of the fury or ambition of its follow-up.

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Record #808: At the Drive-In – Vaya (1999)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Conversations about At the Drive-In’s best release usually dance around a gridlock between In/Casino/Out and Relationship of Command. 

However, that conversation simply cannot be complete without taking their incredible EP Vaya into consideration. While it contains absolutely no shortage of ATDI’s signature angular fury, it also sees the group adding experimental elements into their sonic palate. While it’s often described as a bridge between the two legendary full lengths, it even points to Omar and Cedric’s future in the Mars Volta with astonishing prescience.

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Record #807: At the Drive-In – In/Casino/Out (1998)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

Many years ago, I said that Relationship of Command was undisputedly the best record At the Drive-In had ever released. And while it remains my favorite, I can’t deny the fact that my 2013 claim wasn’t influenced by the astronomical price that vinyl copies of In/Casino/Out were commanding.

As fortune would have it though, I recently acquired a large lot of records from a friend that included an unreal number of classics for a more-than-agreeable price (thanks, Stephen), which included this record that, historical revisionism aside, means a great deal to me (and a whole lot more that will be reviewed in the coming days and weeks).

While the band had been active for four years before this with two EPs and a full length to their name, In/Casino/Out is really the album where they became the At the Drive-In that would become post hardcore legends.

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Record #798: Five Iron Frenzy – Until This Shakes Apart (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If you would have asked me ten years ago which band’s new album I’d be most excited for in 2021, it would have taken me hundreds of guesses to finally land on Five Iron Frenzy. After all, I first discovered them in 7th grade, and I’d hope to have grown out of goofy ska songs and Pants Operas in the space of twenty-one years.

However, I realize now that all of their wry, irreverent humor was a sort of Trojan horse, through which they smuggled cutting criticisms of the Church’s hypocrisy toward racism, police brutality, and greed into youth group kids’ Discmans.

While these messages have always been hiding amid the upstrokes, horn lines, and bad puns, Until This Shakes Apart pulls off all pretense, abandoning their wooden horse in favor of a full-on frontal assault.

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Record #769: Fiddlehead – Between the Richness (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In 2018, members of hardcore legends Have Heart and post-hardcore heroes Basement released Springtime and Blind, a stunningly tight and catchy piece of post hardcore that was as catchy as it was urgent. Despite its clear hardcore roots, there was a remarkable pop sensibility that injected each song with throat-shredding singalong passages, all wrapped up in a 25-minute package.

At the time, it seemed like a lightning-in-a-bottle record. The kind of record that was singularly excellent, even if you couldn’t quite describe why. And usually, these sorts of records prove incredibly difficult to follow up. After all, capturing lightning once is almost impossible. But twice?

Apparently it’s not that hard for Fiddlehead.

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Record #753: The Casket Lottery – Moving Mountains (2000)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It feels bizarre to remember now, but by the time 2000 rolled around, many people had felt that the emo scene was already waning—after all, Sunny Day Real Estate had already broken up and had a reunion. Mineral had been defunct for two years. And even those stalwarts were considered to be latecomers—and even imposters—to a  scene rooted in emotional hardcore bands like Rites of Spring and Embrace.

But the turn of the Millenium saw an explosion of the emo scene, with bands like American Football, The Appleseed Cast, Jimmy Eat World, and hundreds of others borrowing the juxtaposition of sparkling clean guitars and cathartic explosions of distortion to create their own language.

One of the understated heroes of this scene was The Casket Lottery, formed by former members of mathcore pioneers Coalesce. While certainly a departure from their off-time metalcore chugs, there’s certainly enough muscle in their sophomore album, Moving Mountains, to dissuade anyone from calling them wimpy emo kids.

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Record #743: Entropy – Liminal (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Last summer, in the midst of global pandemic, some friends and I started a remote band called Bares His Teeth. As often happens when you write music together, we started sharing a lot of music with one another. We shared music that inspired us, songs that we wanted to emulate, and just songs we loved that bore no educational value to our own songwriting but we wanted to share anyway.

But towards the end of the year, the band chat became obsessed with one release in particular: the album Liminal by the small German outfit Entropy. It was hard to find, but that didn’t stop three-fifths of us from ordering it.

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Record #740: Gorillaz – Gorillaz (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It was supposed to be a joke, right?

No one would start a band fronted by cartoon characters who fight robots and ghosts and expect to be taken seriously, right? Especially not when that person already has an incredibly successful band that blurs the lines between Britrock and punk?

They were just supposed to bring in a couple underground rappers for some fun features, write some jokey tracks, and call it a day. They certainly weren’t supposed to eventually bring together legendary artists like Lou Reed, The Clash, Bobby Womack, Grace Jones, and Snoop Dogg to create multiple masterpieces. 

That seemed to be the plan when Gorillaz released their debut record on the world. Have some laughs, release a couple novelty singles, and call it a day. No one expected them to become one of the most impressive projects in the landscape of modern pop music.

But looking back at Gorillaz from the other side of their now legendary catalogue, it’s clear that this understated LP was hiding a bit more than they let on.

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Record #739: Fugazi – Instrument Soundtrack (1999)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Few bands are as monolithic as Washington DC post-hardcore demigods Fugazi. For decades, they have been celebrated for their ethical convictions as well as the severity of their output. So it comes as “No Surprise” that the documentary about one of the best bands in the world would be one of the greatest music films ever made.

The documentary Instrument is a massive work, following Fugazi from their early days in the DC hardcore scene to the recording of End Hits, and it captures a side of Fugazi that runs counter to their reputation as self-serious punk monks—most notably that they lived in a house together with no heat, surviving on a Steady Diet of Nothing but rice. The film instead shows a group of guys who love making music and have a lot of fun doing it.

Likewise, the soundtrack to that film captures the same playful attitude—which isn’t a word typically used to describe Fugazi.

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