June Of '44

June Of 44 are part of that essential lineage of American underground rock that developed from the late Eighties through the Nineties in Louisville, Kentucky, later cross-pollinating with the Chicago, Illinois scene. We're talking about Midwest bands that emerged from the post-hardcore restlessness of the Reagan decade and became seminal in defining post-rock, math-rock and slowcore: groups like Slint, Squirrel Bait and Bastro, but also the work of the multifaceted songwriter Will Oldham/Palace/Palace Brothers/Bonnie Prince Billy, who immortalized Slint on the iconic cover of "Spiderland" (Touch & Go, 1991).

We're at a moment when hardcore fury had exploded in a thousand directions, driven by genre-breaking albums from bands central to the geography of the national scenes: "Zen Arcade" (SST, 1984) and "Warehouse: Songs And Stories" (Warner, 1987) by Hüsker Dü, "Double Nickels On The Dime" (SST, 1984) by the Minutemen, "Rites Of Spring" (Dischord, 1985) by Rites of Spring, and "Repeater" (Dischord, 1990) by Fugazi shifted hardcore's velocities, cross-bred it with elements of other genres, experimented with song structure, and led to lyrics that were more reflective and introspective. Each of these bands had the ability to forge a unique sound and style, which became a touchstone for present and future generations drawn to a more experimental, personal form of rock.

June Of 44 – Fred Erskine (bass), Doug Scharin (drums), Sean Meadows and Jeff Mueller (guitars and vocals) – formed out of the ashes of Rodan, Codeine, Lungfish, Rex and Hoover, moving on from the fire of emocore in search of an evolution beyond it. In the mid-Nineties they released "Engine Takes To The Water" (Quarterstick, 1995) and "Tropics And Meridians" (Quarterstick, 1996), albums in which the band's intellectual post-rock, built vocally above all around spoken-word delivery, had already taken shape, albeit in a more visceral, urgent and raw form. What stands out from the very beginning is the variety in song structures and the originality of the compositional solutions found, conveying a sense of wide-open receptiveness to whatever musical impressions the quartet chose to explore.

For "Four Great Points" the band took a bit more time than on their previous album-a-year output, putting out an interim EP, "The Anatomy Of Sharks" (Quarterstick, 1997), containing a handful of outtakes from earlier sessions. The album was recorded between the summer of 1996 and that of 1997 by Bob Weston (Volcano Suns, Shellac) at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio studios in Chicago and at Sound Techniques in Boston.

The record represents the fullest and most fully realized synthesis of June Of 44's research and experimentation, both sonic and compositional, absorbing jazz, progressive, slowcore, noise and electronic influences. The line-up is also expanded with violins, horns, bells and synthesizers, deployed with precision and restraint, starting with the gorgeous, airy opening track, "Of Information & Belief":

This is the greatest place on earth

Interstated north and south

I know you won't go far away

Three full rooms full night and day

We can't stay here

It's time to go

Halfway through comes the unexpected entrance of strings, their architecture crumbling over the guitar arpeggios, definitively breaking the spell in the corrosive, distorted pre-finale. The band's songwriting craft circles back to the opening section, now enriched and supported by the presence of strings. The placid momentum of the first track is dampened by the restless, obsessive riff of "Dexterity Of Luck", with its Arabic-tinged harmonic leanings, a mantra weaving a taut, sturdy through-line all the way to the conclusion – a showcase for the bass – around which the track's entire movement unfolds, between accumulation and subtraction. Both tracks exemplify the variety and unpredictability of the solutions June Of 44 arrived at, carrying lyrics that are anything but secondary:

She says one last thing

Hey wait a minute, just one last thing

Don’t forget to pick the needle up off the lockgroove

In “Four Great Points” iconic, furious tracks – future anthems for the band – like “Cut Your Face” alternate with anxious, jagged instrumental digressions like “Doomsday”, built on harmonics, vibrato and slide guitar. There's also a lighter, more sinuously rhythmic track (“Does Your Heart Beat Slower”) strung together with dub vibrations and cultured electronics (“Lifted Bells”), which, although it also recalls the groovin' of Modest Mouse's “The Lonesome Crowded West” (Up, 1997), we'd more readily associate with the sound of the Bristol trip-hop scene. “Shadow Pugilist”, on the other hand, represents the synthesis of a folk, rock and blues songwriting approach in the vein of June of 44, built on guitars, singing and spoken word, in which halfway through the track shifts and takes another direction, suspended and rarefied, before circling back to the beginning:

All the time you drift along

Too high, too afraid to come down

Shadow riding, you fall

The elongated light makes you topple down

The closer, “Air #17”, works more like a short film than simply a piece of music. The sonic apparitions of a train, a typewriter and flashes of lightning accompany the vocals and dissolve into guitar arpeggios whose trajectory is unpredictable, alongside flickers of trumpet and delicate, jazz-tinged touches of drums. Once again, just as we sense where the track is headed, a new section begins in which the rhythm section shifts gear. Then the elements return, restart, unfold, loop, and end abruptly, out of nowhere.

“Four Great Points” is an album that hasn't aged a single day. It contains the formula for a kind of experimentation possible within punk and rock beyond the traditional drums-bass-guitars-vocals lineup, that whole universe which was then beginning to be defined as “post-“. It's an album that still teaches us today that all you need to experiment are the instruments you already own, or the ones friends can lend you – as also happens on “American Football” by American Football (Polyvynl, 1999) – because underground rock is open territory, where nothing is impossible, and where even the rock song form need not be a limit. Quite the opposite.

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28/03/2021