13 Songs by Fugazi (paragraphs by Katharine)

"Nineteen eighty nine and I’m feeling fine. Welcome to my first of many reviews of the discography of legendary DC band Fugazi."

Fugazi is a band just like any other, but I’d argue that they’re one of the only bands that’re worth writing an entire column about. Fugazi were a Frankenstein band, made up of some strong players during the early days of D.C.’s punk and hardcore scene. I’ll only give you this crash course once, so listen up. There’s a little bit of member shuffling that was done in the band’s early years of 1986 and 1987, but the following lineup are the musicians on all recorded albums that I’ll be reviewing.

From Minor Threat, there came vocalist and guitarist Ian Mackaye. From Rites of Spring, there came vocalist (and later guitarist)[Repeater onwards] Guy Picciotto and drummer Brendan Canty. From Silver Spring, Michigan, there came Joe Lally. The four formed one of the most influential bands of all time. Fugazi are one of the most well preserved bands born from the underground 1980s Washington D.C. music scene, thanks to founder Mackaye’s record label Dischord Records. All Fugazi albums were released via his label, and today, on the Dischord website, there are hundreds of archived Fugazi concerts from the 80s, 90s, and early 00s available for a small fee of $5. This five dollar fee was meant to mimic the price cap put on all Fugazi shows. Members wanted the band to be as accessible as possible, often having shows be all ages and during the daytime. The history of Fugazi is political, brazenly communal, and a major reason why I think that they’re one of America’s most important bands. However, shamefully, I will concede that I know more about the bands history and practices at live shows than I do their music. Before writing this column, I would wager that I’ve listened to maybe four albums by the band, and never with my thinking cap on. It was always more haphazard. In writing this weekly column, creatively titled Fugazi Fridays, I’ll be taking a deep dive into the musical world of Fugazi.

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Fugazi released their first full length compilation album in 1989, simply titled 13 Songs. This album was a compilation of the band's first two EPs, the Fugazi EP and Marginal Walker EP. This first full length album comes off the band's well disciplined first two years of practicing and playing live. Their sound was polished and focused. The band is incredibly tight. If you’ve ever seen a photograph of the band playing, you’ll see them caught in motion. Their movement is implied, and this aversion to stasis is reflected in the music, but is ironically contrasted by the opening track, “Waiting Room”.

“Waiting Room” is undeniably Fugazi’s biggest breakout song, the closest they ever got to mainstream. It is the most streamed song of the band’s on Spotify with over 100 million listens logged. This is due, in part, to the positively sticky bass riff that Joe Lally introduces the song with. Lally’s bass playing and his synchronistic lockstep with Brendan Canty is the glue that fuses Fugazi and elevates them above their classic punk background.

The lyrics of this song tell the Slackers Lament, as Ian Mackaye sings about his slower, alternative lifestyle. While the punk movement jumped up and writhed, drug-addled and set on fire, Fugazi’s members laid in wait for their big break. They watched as the friends collapsed to the floor, and rose above them in a band that would ultimately surmount to more than anything from D.C. hardcore’s past.

The song's main vocals are Mackaye, but he’s accented by flamboyant backup vocals from Picciotto. The call and response lyrics of “I don’t read the news (I won’t live by it!)” and “Everybody’s always down (Tell me why!)” make the singers seem like a pair of brothers, one older and one younger, parroting everything the other says. Guy seems to jeer at Mackaye’s bold proclamations of self-assurance but in the end, the two work in tandem with one another. Their voices accent one another in an almost Townshend-Daltrey sort of dynamic¹: one, blonde and small, barks his vocal parts like a musical drill sergeant while the other, tall and dark haired, melodiously meanders through his voice parts in a much more emotional and new-age delivery.

This dynamic plays out very satisfyingly throughout the album, especially on the songs that Picciotto fronts. The two switch back and forth, with six of 13 songs being sung primarily by Mackaye and the other seven being sung primarily by Picciotto.

One of the most notable Picciotto tracks to me was “Give Me The Cure”, a groovy Television sounding track where Guy sings through indirect thoughts of suicide and drug sedation. He sings, “I never walked the side of dying before”, and the whole song comes off as a more mature evolution of Minor Threat’s “Straight Edge”. “Give Me The Cure” does not so much condemn drug use in others, but instead pounds through the existential terror of dying while on drugs. Picciotto moans through the ramblings of an addict, delivering “Good God, I don’t need a reason” as though he was just forcefully questioned mid-trip. To contrast him, like a cop, Ian reminds the audience that “it spreads, it spreads, it spreads!”.

“Give Me The Cure” starts off perhaps the strongest three track run in the middle of the album, and is crushingly followed by another one of the album’s most political tracks, “Suggestion”. Let me just say that before listening to this album in full five times this week, “Suggestion” was already my favorite song. However, it was by about the second listen that I realized “Suggestion” is perhaps the best song of this whole crop. Sung by Mackaye from the perspective of a woman after being verbally harassed, the narrative laments a woman's time spent suffering “in the eyes of men” who have no respect for her, and chastising those who refuse to stand up to her. A major part of my love for this song does spawn from the debate surrounding the intentionality of Mackaye’s lyrics, one that has been contributed to by practically every female Fugazi listener as well as Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna and Fire Party’s Amy Pickering.

Since you are all climbing over each other and clambering all around to know my opinion, I think that arguing the quality of Mackaye’s feminism is a waste of time and that this song does ultimately reflect a positive message that opposes violence against women. If you have already heard the song and are of the belief that it would probably sound more believable coming from a woman’s mouth, you’re in luck and you’re also correct. Perhaps the most famous recording of this song live captures the aforementioned Amy Pickering of Fire Party on vocals, and it is undeniably more powerful to see her amplified voice over the flowing riptide of male voices from the crowd. You can watch it here.

The lyrics alone do not sell the song–though great, this song would be a much more cult favorite if not for the extremely tight, tight, tight instrumental groove. Joe Lally delivers one of his most underrated basslines of all time, matching up with Mackaye’s staccato main riff and giving the song an irresistibly dancy backbeat. In combination with a deliciously sung chorus and a borderline jumpscare at the end, “Suggestion” sticks its head above the sand of greatness on this album and elevates itself to supergreatness.

Closing out this insane mid-album trifecta is “Glue Man”, an unbelievably infectious Picciotto track with a beautiful swirling guitar riff that s**ts on almost every single shoegaze album that would spawn from it in the incoming decade. Mackaye creates a hypnotic pinwheel of sound with his guitar playing, in a slide pattern almost undeniably stolen from Hendrix. No shame in dat tho.

This is another one of those standout Guy Picciotto tracks. He’s got quite a few. This song in particular always seemed to possess Picciotto as he delivers what I would easily consider his best performance of the album on this song. In yet another narrative where he plays a drug user, his words almost become unintelligible beyond the sounds of his wailing vowels. It was during a performance of this song that Picciotto famously lifted himself above Canty’s drumkit and hung from a basketball hoop in a Philadelphia gym, creating one of the band's most iconic moments. You can watch a clip of that performance here. I strongly encourage you do so. It is pretty neat.

The back half of this album or the Marginal Walker EP half are less gripping to me than the Fugazi EP half, but that does not mean that the last six tracks are without highlight. There is a two part song that gets closed up on the latter half, with the third track and its response on the tenth track “Burning Too”. The first instance of “Burning” is sung by Picciotto, but the sequel track features a more balanced back and forth between Fugazi’s singers. The lyrics of “Burning Too” are a call to action that takes a more direct approach to the concept of burning. Ian literally shouts “the Earth is burning” and Guy helpfully responds, “We gotta put it out!”. Fugazi approaches the climate crisis from a punker perspective, demanding immediate action in response to this outrage. It is the identification of a problem, immediately followed by the most obvious solution possible. This seemed to be the ethos of punk with no plan, but Fugazi was the antithesis of this. They were true to their words, so songs like “Burning Too” stand out to me. If any of them went to college to get more knowledge, they wouldn’t be in the band they’re in today. If any of these dudes had a degree in Environmental Science, you bet your sweet ass that they would have dedicated their lives to reversing climate change with their foot on the gas. They’re strange and funny, but it was just 55 degrees in December, so I guess I’m burning too.

Two more standouts to go, then we’ll talk about the album overall. Immediately following is another one of my favorite tracks from this album, “Provisional”. Easily one of the most sonically dissonant from the rest of the albums punky sound, “Provisional” sounds more like “Union City Blue” by Blondie or some other ambling Jim Jarmuschism. Picciotto transforms into a bonafide New York romantic, waxing keenly about the “secure weight of watchful eyes” that he sleeps under. There is an undeniably anthemic quality to this song, one that is extremely East Coast specific, almost like a Bruce Springsteen song. It is too sincerely performed to be parody in my opinion–this brief venture into nostalgic pop was something that the band really felt passionately about. Whatever the case may be, I am particularly fond of this song. It’s charming in all the ways I like, and would make complete sense outside of the band's discography, but I am sure glad that they wrote it.

Funnily enough, separated from “Provisional” by one track, is perhaps the only ‘break-up’ song Fugazi ever wrote (tbd). While Guy rhapsodizes the beauty of the world as he sees it, Ian writes through the angst of the incoming wave of emo songs that would ultimately come to follow it. “Promises are s**t… stupid f**king words… a generation of men found lost at sea.” The like.

“Provisional” and “Promises” stood out to me particularly on my fourth go around with this album, as a curious little duo of songs. Both would prove prophetic instances of genres that would go on to take the 90s and 00s by storm (shoegaze and emo respectively), and they foil one another in the same way Picciotto and Mackaye did vocally. Ian was one to quickly admonish the beginnings of emo and emotional-hardcore, as some magazines at the time dubbed it, but Picciotto was always a more cerebral artist. The lyrics of Guy’s lead songs are populated with “I think” and “I feel” statements, whereas Ian could be caught barking commands at times, as though he was still in Minor Threat. This is a point I would be interested in continuing to visit as I venture deeper through the band's catalog. The distance between the two singers does not clash yet, hopefully it will not clash in the future.

Fugazi are a band that kept unintentionally creating anthems. For a first full length album, 13 Songs is incredibly well polished. There is the sense that these songs were born from particularly successful jam sessions, which may sound negative but it is intended in the most endearing sense. Although the guitar work is piously lush and the rhythm section is rigidly tight, Fugazi carry themselves sonically with humility. They know they can reach great heights, but they never strive for heights they know they can't achieve. There is nothing on this album that is put there to impress you or to shock the audience, it is honest about itself. The thing that makes Fugazi magnetic is the catchiness of their songs; the danceability of these tracks. Although most members share a background in punk, this album makes a case for the unsustainability of the lifestyle. Words are no longer hurled like attacks from lead singers; they are shouted but with the intention of resonating, not simply being heard.

This is the band that never sold out, but sometimes I wish that they did. These songs are made to fit into the mouths of mobs of fans, all tightly packed into some arena. It’s more of a feat that they never did echo off of stadium walls than it would have been if Fugazi played MetLife.

This is an extremely strong first album. It’s even stronger because it really isn’t a first album. These two EPs play off of one another so well because of the rapid succession at which they were produced, with not too much time for evolution between the release of the two of them. The result is a cohesive first entry into the Fugazi canon that leaves me excited for the road ahead. There is clearly a bright future here for the new sound of Fugazi with the many millions of directions they could choose to take themselves. This album takes all of their initial great ideas–the best idea being to form–and puts them all into one place.

The energy is frenetic, it bursts at the seams, it refuses to be told to wait and wait and wait and wait.

check out the @worstideaforamagazine.ever instagram page to see the slides, and more music-related posts. also check out katharine at her radio show, @overthecounter.radio. there’ll be more of her over the next few weeks.

1. Just to divulge briefly into The Who/Fugazi comparison, the second track of this album is called “Bulldog Front”. Is this a reference to The Who’s “Eminence Front”? Is Ian Mackaye Ivor the dirty old sooty engine driver or is he Boris the Spider? Does Brendan Canty know how to drive?