From The Archives: Fugazi, “The Argument”
I wrote this for the Allentown, Pa., Morning Call in 2001:
Fugazi’s unforgiving, high-concept punk rock has slowly frayed at the seams since 1995’s beautifully bleak “Red Medicine,” and that slow unraveling process has kept the band from creaking into obsolescence, even if things lacked oomph in the interim. The past half-decade also has uncovered Fugazi’s inner garage band, and many of the tracks on “The Argument” groove with a looseness that would have been unthinkable in the spartan surroundings of earlier discs. Check out the opening six-string chime of “Oh” — if that isn’t a long-distance dedication to pre-Reagan rock, then guitarists Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto have smaller record collections than anyone would have ever expected. Similar moments tumble out elsewhere. But lest we forget that this is political punk’s flagship band, “Cashout” sticks a finger in the eye of urban-renewal chiefs (“Who’s buying all their tickets to the game?” MacKaye asks), and the disc as a whole asks more questions — internal and external — than it answers. But instead of offering up pure crankiness or defiance, “The Argument” dissolves, shifts, mutates, stumbles and stomps from one idea to the next. Graceful aging, it seems to say, is a waste of time for anybody who truly cares about living life.
3 months ago | Tags: Morning Call Fugazi
