End Hits

“Can’t ask for more, so why unfulfilled/We take apart everything we build,” Ian MacKaye sings on “Break”, the opening track from <i>End Hits</i>. Fugazi’s fifth album was released in 1998—a time when the American economy was humming along, Internet 1.0 was changing the world and things were looking mostly OK. So why does End Hits contain some of the band’s darkest moments? Well, maybe the four members of Fugazi simply knew what was coming. In some ways, <i>End Hits</i> is a cruelly slept-on late-1990s masterpiece. It’s an ode to the emotional entropy inherent in long-term punkhood, as well as a reflection of a prevailing political attitude—“Hell, maybe the <i>next</i> guy will be more liberal”—that had taken hold during Bill Clinton’s second administration. Musically, the album continues the obtuse structures and spiky, almost teetering rhythms of 1995’s <i>Red Medicine</i>. But Fugazi’s fury has been traded for a quieter intensity. By the late 1990s, Fugazi had confronted countless social and political issues in their work, from abortion to gun violence. But <i>End Hits</i> proved there would always be new crises to address, and new foes to knock down—and, for better or worse, the screeds and laments on this album haven’t aged a day. There’s the pro-immigration “Place Position”; the anti-gentrification anthem “Five Corporations”; and the blistering “Foreman’s Dog”, which takes on exploitative media reporting. Elsewhere, the security state pops up on “No Surprise”, which finds Guy Picciotto taking aim at the forces that would attempt to subvert the underground: “No CIA, no NSA can map our veins.” <i>End Hits</i>’ penultimate track is MacKaye’s quietly rumbling “Pink Frosty”, one of the most moving songs he’s ever written. “With glue and string and deciphering/We try, try, try to stay together/Despite the pain,” MacKaye sings as <i>End Hits</i> heads toward the finish. It’s proof positive that sustained, articulate punk rock can exist—even after the punks on stage have started showing their first grey hairs.