Review Summary: Fugazi and their jazzy posse...
How does one start a review for an album like this if not with a rhetorical question? Did anyone ever really envision this as a future for Fugazi? A jazz-punk band from former Fugazi members? Full of riffs and rhythmic extravagance? It flows by like nothing happened, even though it is extremely vibrant and wild? Could anyone associate the raw tuneful harshness of Fugazi with easy-going, sonically shrilling instrumental nonchalance? Where was this madness before?
But enough of the enforced fake quotes, The Messthetics and
The Messthetics are a band and an album formed by the fusion of instrumental skill acquired only through years of service in the drilling Fugazi craze or by a special serum induced into your body as a serum in a secret governmental experiment. Either way, you need a mad amount of musical finesse and sense of cohesiveness to create such a wonderfully dissonant record with this level of soft grace and cool attitude.
The album swings by in one sitting without you even noticing. It is easy to interpret and to sit through. It is not challenging at all. But that is a paradox, considering the fact just how mesmerising the music itself is. It is rich on riffs and full of harsh blasting tunes, yet somehow feels refreshingly accessible. Not that it is somehow harmless and tepid, but that it just handles its insanity with enough sophistication to calm down the weirdness factor.
If anything can be an issue, it’s that the songs are nearly indistinguishable in their song-writing from one another. You won’t remember them by their melody or a particularly outstanding moment different from others. But you will remember the entire experience and you will damn well remember to go back to it to have that experience flow and pulse through you again. It is an easy listening at its most difficult and it is the obscure at its most family friendly.
