Pitchfork

Last year's self-titled Evens debut was the sound of two punk lifers finding comfort in their dissent. Ex-Warmers drummer Amy Farina and (former?) Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye were still playing fiery leftist post-hardcore, but with a sort of quiet warmth, using acoustic guitars, rippling drums, and hushed, intimate harmonies. The two had an easy, gooey warmth in their interplay, and sounded happy even when they were singing about police brutality or gentrification. It was pretty easy to imagine most of the songs as Fugazi songs-- you could mentally fill in the spaces where the roaring guitar-spazouts and hypno-basslines might go-- but the amber glow of the record's analog hush also had some Helium in it, often sounding creaky and intimate.

Get Evens is as quiet and pretty as its predecessor, but the effortless ease is gone, replaced by a sort of busy anxiety. These days, MacKaye is mostly playing backup to Farina, plucking out delicately minimal guitar figures while her busy, jittery brushwork runs in circles and fills the empty space. The duo keeps everything hushed, but the songs now seem poised to break out of themselves, as if their calm surfaces are hiding furious turbulence. This is new territory for MacKaye; nuance has never exactly been his thing, and sometimes I wish he'd do away with all the tricky digressions and let loose with one of his anthemic chorus-howls. But restraint adds a surprisingly potent shade of contained rage to the whole enterprise. MacKaye and Farina don't sound quite so comfortable anymore, and it's not hard to figure out why.

Lyrically, Get Evens is an election-year album; a couple of songs address powers-that-be more directly than anything MacKaye has done in years. "Everybody Knows" seems aimed at the Republican electorate currently clogging up the duo's hometown: "You fabricated your way in here, and everybody knows." The song builds to one of the album's few cathartic moments when MacKaye and Farina howl the triumphant conclusion: "You're fired!" And "Dinner With the President" is the sort of imagined-scenario song that folksingers used to do. MacKaye wonders why he's never been invited; he's right there in town and everything: "I don't exist in their worldview/ But if I went, I know what I'd like to do/ Stand up and scream while the food is served." That impotent frustration pops up again and again on the album, especially on opener "Cut from the Cloth", in which he sounds utterly disappointed: "How do people sleep amidst the slaughter/ And why would they vote in favor of their own defeat?"

As on the last album, it's fun to hear MacKaye tempering his pit bull bark into a stunted mumble, but I wish he'd cede more of his lead vocals to Farina, whose shivery, crystalline soprano absolutely slices through everything around it. She and MacKaye have a chemistry so intuitive it feels biological, and when they launch into one of their high, gentle-harmony choruses, they nearly stop time. If Fugazi ever makes another record, I'd love to see Farina taken on as a full-time member.

But will Fugazi ever make another record? Years ago, MacKaye was comfortable with the cult of his personality; he looked perfectly natural on an outdoor stage in front of thousands, pointing at the Capitol behind with righteous, glowering contempt. But he looked happier last year playing to tiny crowds in art galleries, asking the audience to let kids to the front of the stage so they could see. With the Evens, he's fading from figurehead status with a grace that few could've predicted. I just wish someone would come along and fill the space he left.