IVW: Messthetics (Members of Fugazi) | Glasgow

PCL Presents
MESSTHETICS
Friday, 1 February
Broadcast, Glasgow
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Doors 7pm
18+ Only
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Tickets Available from See Tickets & in store Tickets Scotland
https://www.seetickets.com/event/messthetics/broadcast/1289588

Bassist
Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty—the rhythm section of Fugazi—team
up with experimental D.C. guitarist Anthony Pirog for an economic,
emotionally resonant instrumental power-trio record.

The music of
Fugazi presented a series of overlapping conversations—between punk and
funk, aggression and experimentation, the personal and the political.
And those internal tensions became manifest in the frisson between the
band’s two caustic yet complementary voices: the blare of Ian MacKaye
and the sneer of Guy Picciotto. But if Mackaye and Picciotto were the de
facto stars of the show, then bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan
Canty were the directors in the control room engaged in their own
off-mic dialogue. In their 16 years together as Fugazi’s rhythm section,
Lally and Canty developed a personality of their own every bit as
distinct as the band’s dueling mouthpieces. When you think of any given
Fugazi song, often the first thing that comes to mind is the band’s
authoritative but mischievous sense of groove.

So when you hear the stalking, bass-powered backbeat that kicks off the Messthetics’
debut album, it’s like listening in on old friends shootin’ the shit.
The Messthetics is Lally and Canty’s first venture together since Fugazi
went on hiatus in 2003, after which Lally decamped to Italy for the
better part of a decade, while Canty became an in-demand soundtrack
composer, side player for Bob Mould, and frontman for the short-lived
art-pop outfit Deathfix. But if their rhythmic repartee in the
Messthetics is the same as it ever was, it serves as the foundation for a
dramatically different construct than Fugazi. While Fugazi fearlessly
embraced un-punk influences—dub, piano balladry, musique
concrete—shredding was not one of them; they were so self-conscious
about indulging in a little guitar noodling that they gave their song
with lots of arpeggios the tongue-in-cheek title of “Arpeggiator.”

With the Messthetics, Lally and Canty defer to Anthony Pirog, a dexterous
guitarist and a mainstay in the Washington D.C. avant-jazz scene, who’s
given free rein to unleash his six-string splatter atop Lally and
Canty’s propulsion. But lest that combination suggest a post-hardcore
version of Surfing With the Alien, the album is more an instrumental
power-trio record that values economy and emotional resonance over
technical wizardry and structural complexity.