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Rating: Immense.
Listening to it daily, with the attention owed to the suspicion that you have something great in your hands, you realize that the album indeed contains an infinity of nuances, a multitude of ideas, sounds, and different atmospheres, making it different each time, reinterpretative, replayable, and incredibly human, alive—a record made of flesh that feeds on primordial instincts.
End Hits is the definitive Fugazi album, the one that makes you think "it couldn't get better than this; now they should disband and let others reckon with their work."
The review is a challenge; I dive in, certain that criticisms won't be lacking. After all, the difference between a good album and a "boundary line" like End Hits is that, as mentioned, everyone mediates the raw sound with their life, their experiences, and sees in it what they feel, making a review merely a minor opinion.
I hear talk of punk, and I just wouldn't say so. Maybe it's because after Zen Arcade, the word punk means little to me, but for Fugazi, the aesthetic and purpose are different; they navigate between genres while remaining unmistakable.
Amusing: I consider it the greatest post-hardcore album I've ever heard, and three-quarters of the album isn't post-hardcore.
Fugazi are perpetually angry with the rest of the world, they scream against everything and everyone, yet remain credible, unlike other more renowned bands, and incredibly pragmatic ('instead we stand over the dead the vultures all well fed killer running free', how true and how terrible it is to hear it said).
Musically, it is continuous experimentation: MacKaye's wonderful guitar launches into continuous arabesques, screams, creations, but also the rhythm section, human and powerful, like the voice of a never-so-in-shape Picciotto, tormented and tormenting, give the album a wonderful and above all new, fresh architecture that screams the group's personality.
They are legend; if I had six, I’d give six; if I had seven, I’d give seven, but I have five, and I give five.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Place Position (02:45)
all origins are accidental
you've got no papers & no
roads lead home anymore
chance is the root of all
place position all maps are
random all scales are wrong
legal - illegal -
no passion for the difference
legal - illegal -
false premise forge the nation
may all your borders be porous
free transmission
smear genetics c est la vie
yawn yawn yawn
I can't stifle my boredom
so why not act your age
fear of contagion
the violence of a
fence builder's dream that
makes the phrasing of
"all the pleasures of home"
legal illegal -
I want to go home
05 Five Corporations (02:28)
moves so slowly
grows so smoothly
takes so neatly
it's as if they
belong and they've
been here all along
grows so smoothly
moves so slowly
takes completely
it's as if they
belong and they've
been here all along
this one's ours
lets take another
check the math here
check in ten years
clusterfuck theory
buy them up and
shut them down
then repeat
in every town
every town will
be the same
this one's ours
let's take another
five corporations
there is a pattern
06 Caustic Acrostic (02:01)
Lights out for the cynical sharps
For their wide-eyed foils and all attendant props
Supporters of flash and pan-fried fucks
Who grease like cops throwing round their weight
And I feel dangerous and vexed
Swinging two ton second guess
And every motion just cuts too cruel too cruel
And the implication is that you're implicated
Like a caustic acrostic spelling out your name
Lights out cos I can see in the dark
Sidewind my way to the mark of fuse lines
Gas-wet for a spark
I crash I burn I've fully lost it anyway
And you're nowhere
Lights out loser
07 Closed Captioned (04:52)
your etiquette
your rules of interaction
what are you waiting for?
nobody's home
we're all out trying to find one
what are we waiting for?
the recipe a clear connection
the time the time the time
the time the direction
we just want we don't know
this one wants the art
this one wants the politic
everybody wants their
own damn station
if we're so fine
maybe you can tell me why
no one counts until they're dead
i asked you, i asked you
a question, i just want
i don't know
the imperfections are here to find
if your position is so unkind
everything is not alright
and since we live in present tense
the only hope of making sense
all depends on the source of light
everything is closed captioned
so come on
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