Repeater by Fugazi (paragraphs by Katharine)

Welcome back to our second edition of Fugazi Friday. For the uninitiated, this is a bi-weekly column dedicated to describing and reviewing the discography of legendary D.C. post-hardcore band Fugazi. Last time we spoke, it was regarding the topic of the band’s compilation album 13 Songs. 13 Songs saw the band’s first EP, titled simply The Fugazi EP and their Margin Walker EP combined into a full double sided two-headed monster of a 24 inch.

I found the compilation album vigorously exciting. It was eclectic and dancey, making the album an extremely sticky listen. Individual songs hastily devoured topics like drug abuse, misogyny, and climate change with steadfast perspective, making the bands beliefs a defining feature of their presence.

On their first full length studio album, Repeater, the band continues to define their political beliefs in song, but this time the angle is skewed a bit more narrowly. The sounds of Repeater are less varied than 13 Songs, which can be contributed to the fact that it is not a compilation album, but there is also less of a vernal quality to this release. The music of Repeater is more focused and serious in tone. More songs are in minor keys and the tracklist weaves together like it is part of one big uber-tight jam. This heightened synthesis can be traced back to the writing process Fugazi took for this album, which saw them utilizing full band jams to write instead of relying exclusively on Mackaye’s sharp songwriting talents.

On the subject of the band's composition for this album, this is our first entry in Fugazi’s catalog where we see esteemed semi-fab vocalist Guy Picciotto credited as both vocalist and guitarist. The influence that this additional guitarwork has on this album is major. Picciotto’s early guitar playing can be heard on the Rites of Spring self-titled album, his & Canty’s band before Fugazi. Here his playing is more reminiscent of hardcore punk with all its frenetic energy, but with a bit of Picciotto’s signature flamboyance and his untethered style sprinkled on top. Picciotto mostly covers the lower ends of this new batch of songs, allowing Mackaye to fly all around the neck of his guitar like a hummingbird. This often results in teeth-clenching siren chirps that can be heard as early as “Turnover”, but really make their mark in the album’s title track, “Repeater”.

“Repeater” is, in my humble opinion, one of those songs that I would let date my daughter. I can barely contain my excitement when it comes to this track. It takes the second slot on the album, and transitions nicely both from opening track “Turnover” and into “Brendan #1”, but I genuinely cannot bite my tongue on this song any longer.

This song starts with an undeniably memorable drum groove from Brendan Canty. He lays down a shuffle that traps his hands in motion throughout the entire song, apart from the staccato-for-emphasis break in the bridge and the rhythmic stops in the chorus. Canty’s drums are played so ferociously that they almost become like a hum. This drum part is like the treadmill track that the rest of the band bravely champions, all squished up behind one another, running at full force with their instruments in hand. And run they do! Mackaye is my other MVP on this track, nestling his aforementioned ‘siren chirp’ guitar part into the themes of this track.

The first verse of “Repeater” is reminiscent of the more confrontational words Mackaye was writing in Minor Threat, but this time, instead of admonishing drug users, he takes the perspective of one. Drug use and drug violence are extremely prevalent themes on both Repeater and the 13 Songs compilation, but Mackaye infrequently takes the perspective of a drug user himself. In comparison to how Picciotto portrays drug users on other Fugazi songs like “Give Me The Cure”, Ian’s addict is a much more volatile one, hurling insults at the audience and those who would make him a statistic. The chorus of this song is an earworm of a shout-along, where Mackaye counts off “1, 2, 3, repeater!”, as if he’s only giving the cycle of drug violence a 3 count until it repeats again.

Mackaye’s police siren guitar fights with the words that come out of his throat. In this song, Ian Mackaye is both the antagonist and the antagonized. In truth, he is neither a cop nor a young drug-dealing teen, but his body jolts and opens up in live performances as a war is fought between his hands and face.

“Repeater” segues cleanly into “Brendan #1”, an instrumental track led by the force of Canty and Lally’s chemistry alone. Picciotto and Mackaye’s guitars join into the swirling cauldron of sound around the forty-five second mark, and the two trade off some sandpapery scratching. This song is the end of our three song suite at the top of the album, as the song which comes next would come to define a major aspect of Fugazi’s brand.

It is songs like “Merchandise” that make me remember Repeater was Fugazi’s first album. It is like a cold shock of water to the face every time. “Merchandise” is the band acknowledging a major aspect of being a band, and that is creating additional commodities for their audience to buy. Fugazi takes a hard anti-consumerist stance on the existence of such on the chorus of this track: “We owe you nothing, you have no control / You are not what you own”.

If you are at all familiar with Western music and culture of the 1990s, the anti-consumerist perspective was one of abundance. Hit blockbusters like The Matrix and The Truman Show, albums like OK Computer and Rage Against The Machine’s self-titled debut, and books like Glamorama and Fight Club all touted some form of fashion of a similar message of separating a person from purchases. The issue lies in the fact that all of these pieces of media were sold or bought out in a major way. Rage Against The Machine reunited and toured music that they wrote 30 years ago. The Matrix has spawned 4 sequels, including a legacy sequel from 2021. Fight Club was made into a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt. I would venture to guess that Palahnuik’s Tyler Durden stole his “you are not what you own” schtick from this very song. The difference that Fugazi gets to tout over the heads of all of these other mediapictures, is the reality that they did not sell out. They have never produced t-shirts or a coffee company or did a big massive stadium reunion tour. This is the only song with the guts to actually not rake in their millions, but to leave money in fans pockets.

As for other standout tracks from the album, I’ve found myself returning to “Two Beats Off”. Picciotto and Mackaye front an equal amount of tracks on this album, but for whatever reason I found myself a bit more attracted to Makcaye’s vocals on this album. However, in accordance with whatever ghost possessed him at the time, Guy’s vocal delivery of this song is so slurred, confused, and entertaining that I just can’t help but find myself returning to it over and over.

I’ve identified a trend in my Fugazi listening experience, and it’s a trend I expect will proliferate throughout the life of this column, so it’s best to get it out of the way now. I will come clean and say that I find it insanely difficult to understand anything that both Ian and Guy are saying on pretty much any given song. It’s the same issue I have with Fall Out Boy. There is only one solution that I’ve found when I want to sing along to this music at home, and it’s probably one I’m just going to keep using. Rather than make up fake words that are complete nonsense, I’ve taken to just singing along to the vowel sounds the vocalist is making. There is no better song to do this with in Fugazi’s catalog so far than “Two Beats Off”. By the third verse, Picciotto has literally stopped forming coherent words. Instead, he opts in the direction of moaning and vocalizing through a series of sounds you might hear on an ‘Best of CBGBs’ compilation record with the likes of Richard Hell and Johnny Thunders. He sort of swaggers his way through an incomprehensible tide groove, like a cartoonish black & white stick figure with sunglasses on, until he arrives at the only intelligible lyric of the song: “desire trips me up.” Like yeah man, it totally does. Be cool.

This swaggering is led by Picciotto, but Lally and Mackaye provide him with a spidery riff, played in synchronicity on each of the verses that only breaks formation to ring out a couple of chords on the choruses. The whole song reminds me of a Nan Goldin dive-bar photo, a ratty looking guy scowling in a corner in the middle of nowhere. It’s another great character portrait by Picciotto in his performance, and is a clear standout on this album.

On the tracks following “Two Beats Off”, Fugazi surprisingly returns to a one off nostalgic theme from 13 Songs. This was a direction I certainly did not expect, but one I welcome with open ears, eyes, and mouth. “Styrofoam” and “Reprovisional” see Fugazi’s return to their more romantic, ‘big chord’ pop style that we listeners previously heard on “Provisional”. “Styrofoam” is a bit of a looser connection, I would argue that Picciotto’s guitar part could fit very easily into a Blondie song somewhere. Maybe with the gain turned down a bit. However, “Reprovisional” is literally what the name says, it’s a repeat of “Provisional”! When that first chord came in and hit, I actually shouted the first time I heard it. If you remember, “Provisional” was in my 3 favorite cuts from my 13 Songs review.

The difference between the two versions lies almost completely in Picciotto’s delivery of the song. The band plays slightly more distorted and larger here, but instead of singing sweepingly with Bowie-like fashions through the dreamy lyrics, Picciotto attacks every line with a growl and a gruffness. The bakery sweet sheen has melted off of his visions of “clear, expensive skies” and he now looks up at those same skies and hates how they are made of money. It’s a brilliant way to evolve this song, especially considering the more directly anti-capitalist themes of this album. He mocks his way through the chorus of “We hope we won't get what we deserve, Behind the targets in front of all the people we serve”, and even adlibs “Bang bang, shoot shoot” over a riff that once seemed dreamy but is now downright dreary.

It makes sense that “Reprovisional” was the version of the song that made it to the album, but I am thankful that “Provisional” exists. A comparison is made, and it gives me the illusion that Picciotto is watching himself sing “Provisional” on television, and mocking his own glamorous delivery from the hatred of his couch.

Repeater closes on an absolute knockout. “Shut the Door” is the sonic equivalent of being trapped in a crowd that is pressed in so tightly you can barely move. Suctioned inside the people next to and in front of you. The crowd is swaying like an ocean, and you need so desperately to break free to reach someone or something, but it’s the hardest fight you've ever had in your life. Breaking free of a cycle and a group of people but still being sucked back in; you just genuinely can’t stand to abate it. I feel routine and repeated blows to the stomach when Mackaye wails, “She’s not breathing! She’s not moving! She’s not coming back!”.

“Shut the Door” was written following the passing of a friend of Mackaye’s. The ‘she’ of the chorus passed away of a heroin overdose, and the deep pain of this passing shreds itself apart at the heart of this song. The verses of this song are full of simple contradictions, making direct allusion to heroin use as setting someone free. The dripping contradiction is made overt: “I burn a fire to stay cool”, but instead of just hanging around inside of this irony, Mackaye fashions an abstract portrait of self destruction: “I burn myself, I am the fuel”.

Not one of us can deny our own passes at self-destruction. At some point or another, you have done something that denigrated your body or your mind. Perhaps you disrespected both of them at once. The self-hatred required to destroy oneself is what forms “Shut the Door” as an empathetic image. You too have burned a fire of your own design, but when you give too much of your self and your body to a fire, it will move through you and destroy you. There is an empathy demanded to listen to and identify with a song imbued with so much grief.

“Shut the door so I can leave, shut the door” is the final request that the album makes before the band's cacophonous send off. That is still a request I am trying to fully process, even after spending two weeks with this album. To shut the door on a heroin addict would be unwise and immature, but to shut the door on the mourning of a deceased friend would provide closure. Considering how empathetic I’ve established this song to be, I think it would be a misstep to interpret this line as Mackaye quietly begging to be let out of his addicted friends life, but is that really such a selfish request? It is a line that continues to elude me. There are things I would rather not know, and I think the specificities of the emotion being portrayed here is one of those things.

“Shut the Door” is a pulverizing end to the main album of Repeater, but there is an additional piece of this puzzle. The 3 Songs EP was initially released in a small rollout, but in the same year it was released, Dischord began packaging it with the Repeater LP, thus creating Repeater + 3 Songs.

I don’t have too much to add about the eponymous three songs. The EP features another instrumental track that we can assume was brought to the band by Joe Lally as it is titled “Joe #1”. The song feels like an interlude, despite its soft danceability. “Break-In” is a Picciotto fronted track that feels very classic punk and certainly sounds much more like a Rites of Spring track than anything else on this album. This EP is essentially just a vessel for “Song #1” to exist in, and that’s just fine with me because I think I totally love “Song #1”.

The thing about “Song #1” that no one tells you is that it is just a Beastie Boys song that ended up in Fugazi’s brain. Fugazi have done call and response vocals before–think “Waiting Room”--but there’s something particular about the way that Guy chimes in at the end of these lines that reminds me so specifically of License To Ill-era Beasties that really scratches my brain just right. Content-wise, I also think this is reminiscent of a Beastie Boys song. Mackaye (with the help of Picciotto) chides those who get too wrapped up in the self-importance they perceive of their music and their scene. The song jabs at fans of the band who are still waiting around for hardcore music by warning them that “song number one is not a f**k you song, I’ll save that thought until later on.” It’s really a perfectly simple and light-hearted track that speaks to the messages of the rest of the album with, just in a different tone. It updates the Beastie Boys early punk track “Deal With It”, first dunking on lamezos and then uplifting its audience.

As far as first albums go, Repeater is an unbelievable start. This album roars like a warehouse caught on fire. Canty clangs his way around the entire runtime, incorporating a big bell into his kit. More metal for his pedal. Picciotto’s guitar frees Mackaye’s, allowing him to produce previously unseen levels of chaos from their small factory. Joe Lally is the conveyor belt itself, churning out pristine products from hours of toil in a consistent perfectness.

This album at its core is a machine. The product is not one you can cop for a chunk of your paycheck, it is the very seed of passion. It is the feeling of a blazing path towards success. I am very anxious to see what this band does with their feet on fire.