Fugazi: Red Medicine [DISCHORD]

Why you'll love it

This Dischord pressing is remastered from the original source tapes and comes in a printed inner sleeve with lyrics. Red Medicine gave Fugazi their highest chart placings, No. 126 on the Billboard 200 and No. 18 in the UK.

This edition

• Remastered from the original tapes
• Printed inner sleeve
• Lyrics included
• Pressed in the USA

About the album

After the full-tilt sound of In on the Kill Taker, Fugazi went looking for room to breathe. They spent months jamming at Guilford House, a secluded country estate in Connecticut, then recorded at Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, Virginia, with engineer Don Zientara in early 1995, Ian MacKaye, Guy Picciotto, Joe Lally and Brendan Canty producing the sessions themselves and getting braver in the studio as they went.

The album opens on a boombox recording before Guy Picciotto's "Do You Like Me" crashes in, a song he wrote alone and the band filled out together. "Version" drifts into dub with clarinet, "By You" goes psychedelic on alternate tunings, "Forensic Scene" turns quiet and ambient, and "Target" and "Bed For The Scraping" keep the old hardcore engine running. Little practice-room fragments are tucked in between, and for all the detours it still hits like a Fugazi record.

AllMusic's Andy Kellman heard more rhythmic punch and more range than on the record before it, and the album still points to what indie rock could do with guitars. The original sleeve printed a mail-order price of eleven dollars plus postage, which is about as Fugazi as a sleeve can get.

Also at Kops: more Fugazi on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Dischord (cat# DIS90v), a reissue of the 1995 album.