Six years since Get Evens, the Washington, D.C., duo the Evens are back with The Odds,a brilliant batch of subtle protest songs, out Nov. 20 and streaming here until Nov. 26.
ListenThe Odds by the Evens
Streaming until Nov. 26
Tracklist
Together with his partner, drummer/vocalist Amy Farina, Ian MacKaye formed the Evens in 2001, about a year before his band Fugazi went on indefinite hiatus. With MacKaye trading his Gibson SG and screaming voice in for a baritone guitar and more measured singing, the relatively quiet Evens released their self-titled debut LP in 2005 on Dischord Records, an influential, revered punk label that MacKaye co-founded almost 32 years ago.
A followup LP emerged rather quickly with 2006’s Get Evens before Farina and MacKaye took a break from releasing new music and touring to begin raising a family. If The Odds seems to pick up quite close to where they left off six years ago, there’s good reason.
“When Amy and I first started playing in 2001, there was just so much music,” MacKaye says, over the phone from Dischord House in D.C. “We weren’t thinking about being a band, we were just playing. We were not thinking about it in terms of anybody ever hearing them, which then of course makes it possible to write any number of songs — whether they’re good or bad, it doesn’t really make any difference because we’re just enjoying playing music together."
Among the soul-stirring impassioned songs on The Odds is one of the most direct of MacKaye’s catalogue.
“'Competing with the Till’ is an unusual song for me,” he admits. “It’s not a song I’d normally write. The lyrics to that song are pretty much exactly what occurred, so it’s really a narrative. It’s almost a novelty song in a way. I don’t mean that it’s dismissible but it’s just an unusual song for me.”
“Competing with the Till” documents a frustrating Evens show in Canterbury, England, where, though they almost exclusively play art galleries and other "unconventional spaces" powered by their own portable P.A. system, in this case they were informed their only venue option was a campus pub. An indifferent staff barely looked up, as the band moved chairs and tables (even a pool table) around to make the area they were meant to play more hospitable for fans. Even the news that the power supply near the stage was on the fritz was met with a “Meh.”
“I said from the stage that night, ‘Mark my words: I’m gonna write a song called ‘Competing with the Till,’ because at that very moment, the cash registers were going ‘ching, ching, ching,’” MacKaye says, laughing at the poignant absurdity of the situation. “It was such a perfect moment, a perfect example where we had this quiet moment in the song and you hear the cash registers going. It was like, ‘Wow, it’s happening, right here: commerce and art pitched battle.’"
“People confuse this and say, ‘Oh, he’s just anti-alcohol’ or whatever,” he continues. “It’s not the issue. The issue is the alcohol industry, which has successfully lobbied to convince the entire population of the world apparently that rock ‘n’ roll or music in general is best served with a beer or something — that, somehow, these forms are fused. And I think that’s wrong; I don’t buy it."
“It’s not lost on me that my form of expression has largely been relegated to venues where the economy is based on self-destruction,” MacKaye says. “And that’s nuts. So, I said was going to write this song and we came home and I had this riff that worked perfectly and we did it.”
A heroic figurehead to countless musicians and fans, MacKaye is renowned for his work ethic and prolific productivity, so a six-year gap between LPs might well be unprecedented since he’s been in bands like Teen Idles, Minor Threat, Embrace, Fugazi and now the Evens. But, personal and other professional obligations notwithstanding, he’s says he’s not here to make things for the sake of making them.
“In my work, I don’t have any sense of obligation to an audience in terms of productivity,” he explains. “I have an obligation to an audience in terms of legitimacy. Like, just being real. If I have something to say, I’ll say it. If I don’t, I’m not.
“I’m not worried about disappearing from people’s consciousness," MacKaye continues. "I’m interested in creating music that speaks to me that I hope will be of interest to others and, even more so, I hope will be a point of gathering in which people will connect and come together in a room and make a show together. That’s it. That can be done whether it’s with 35 people or 3,500 people. It’s like making dinner. You try to make food that people are interested in eating so that they come by and sit down with you.”
IMTo hear the full conversation, you can download an MP3 if you right-click this highlighted text and “Save target as.” Or to stream it, press play.
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