CD's Revisited: The Evens - The Evens

via Pitchfork.
I 100% bought this album because of Ian MacKaye. That might have been a mistake at the time. Not because this is a bad album or anything, but when I bought The Evens I was at a point in my life where I was looking for music that was loud and fast, and it was naive of me to believe that this album would fulfill that need when I already knew that most Fugazi albums didn't do anything for me (I would even go as far as to say that at the time, I knew any Fugazi song that wasn't "Waiting Room" didn't really do it for me).

I remember listening to this album a few times and trying to force myself to like it, if only to justify spending money on it. Other than "All These Governors," I don't think there's a single song that really spoke to me at age 15, and even then I'm not sure if the song itself meant a whole lot to me outside of liking the melody. I didn't outright hate it, but for context a lot of what I was listening to at the time was harder in comparison so to hear MacKaye crooning instead of barking his lyrics didn't sit right with me.

Listening to The Evens now I feel like I can appreciate it more. It probably won't ever been considered a groundbreaking piece of work, and The Evens are maybe the least influential band that Ian MacKaye has been a part of, but I think its relative quietness- both in terms of its sound and the hype surrounding its release, is this album's biggest charm. It doesn't build up any expectations, it just simply is, and now that I've had half my life to let it settle in, I think that's pretty cool.

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