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11/10/04 Stuk, Leuven

Quiet, intimate, interesting.

When it was announced that punk icon Ian MacKaye had formed a new band - and a duo at that! (HIPHIPHIP) - a while ago, rumours immediately spread that Fugazi, his main band and one of the decisive and most interesting "indie" bands of the past twenty years if you ask me, had split up. Of course, that conclusion was a bit premature, as MacKaye only wanted to have something to do while his band was non-active (some people prefer raising children over being on the road all the time). It became clear very soon last Wednesday that The Evens (Mackaye and drummer Amy Farina, who used to be in The Warmers with his brother) would be something entirely else than the explosive cocktail that Fugazi is. Armed with a drum kit, a baritone guitar and (usually harmonizing) vocals - the duo delivered a minimalist show, taking songs from a recently recorded low-key album of 12 songs set to be released in early 2005. Indeed, no one who attended the show was prepared for anything, which is quite frustrating on the one hand (it's not easy to describe music you're not familiar with and that you only get to hear once), but it also allows for a more open-minded reception I guess. Anyway, from the first song ("On the Face of It"?) onwards, it immediately became clear that MacKaye does have his own, recognizable style - also outside of Fugazi. The music was generally quiet - hovering between strummed near-drones and hookier material - but the guitar parts and intonation of the vocals were definitely recognizable to anyone owning one or more Fugazi-albums. Some of the songs sounded pretty abstract and mantra-like (certainly with that weird distortion of Farina's drum sounds and vocals that were led through their small amps instead of a P.A.-system and thus became a bit distorted), which frequently made 'em end before you had actually gotten into them. The big advantage of such a short and small-scale (I guess about 100-120 people attended the "show") performance is that it's all much more relaxed and intimate and both MacKaye and Farina seemed very much at ease (except after the first song, when he asked a guy on the first row to stop videotaping the performance - "Just… enjoy the show, man") and willing to communicate. Sitting only two feet from his audience, MacKaye's intensely piercing eyes constantly dwelled over the people in front of him while he explained what some of his songs were about. Of course, the re-election of Bush and the current situation in the US was touched upon, but MacKaye was smart enough to stress that not all of his songs were political, although it has been a recurring theme for more than two decades. Other funny moments occurred when the audience was invited to repeatedly sing the lines "The police with not be ex-cu-sed, the police will not be-ha-ve" and when everybody was invited to whistle along to another song, which resulted in a half-hilarious cacophony. So, the atmosphere was nice and it was quite a blast to see MacKaye so at ease instead of working up the blood-raw intensity of the Fugazi-gigs, but somehow I did got the feeling that something was lacking - perhaps the songs needed to be more fleshed out, perhaps the volume needed to be cranked up. It's just that the whole thing seemed a bit noncommittal or random, as if several of the songs were jumbled together only the night before. I'm sure that they're worth checking out, because they wouldn't have been recorded otherwise, but it'll surprise me if the album ends up being more than "a pretty satisfying side-project". After a mere hour of calm and simple music (no "Vowel Movement," the children's song MacKaye and Farina recorded earlier this year) and pleasant talk the show ended, but what mainly stuck with me the day after was that I'd stood only several feet away from an icon whom I'd never seen sitting on a chair before before. The word "interesting" was invented to describe shows like this one.

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