Engine Down — Demure
Editors note: Wow, check it out, someone else wanted to write about something they love and we let them do that because writing about what you love is so so good. Take it away, Patrick.
Starting off a thinkpiece with “philly’s diy/punk scene is incredibly good” is about as useless as a blogger can be in 2016. That being said: Philly’s punk and DIY/punk scene is the best we’ve had since the DC scene of the 90s-00s. We’re finally getting back to the point where house shows are the norm, labels can be made in basements, and billboard charting status can be achieved by hustling and just being fucking good at your instruments. This is truly a great time to be alive, fam.
If there’s anything to huff and puff about regarding the Philly scene, it’s that it is so fresh and exciting that it seems like it’s erasing the history of those once great scenes, much like the DC one. While DC and Revolution Summer was often seen as a touchstone for music that would come to pass in the genre, Philly is reinventing the entire dang book, making those previous scenes seem like a distant memory more and more with every EP that gets self-released to Bandcamp. So let’s flashback to 2002 in DC, or more specifically, Richmond.
If there is any band from the Philly scene that’s comparable to Engine Down, it’s probably Restorations: Not hooky or anthemic enough to be as instantly recognizable as your Menzingers and Hop Alongs of the scene and not chunky or noisy enough to be embraced by the heavier crowds like Fight Amp.
As if lacking Fugazi’s political lean and penchant for shout-alongs or Nation of Ulysses’ abrasiveness wasn’t enough of a foot shot, Engine Down also had the misfortune of coming around about a decade too late. The band released their first album just two years before Fugazi released their last and Engine Down broke up only two years after Fugazi. No one gives a motherfuck about Bush, a genuinely dope band, because they rode the coat tails of Nirvana and the grunge scene long after it had been established. The same could be said for Engine Down. The scene, simply enough, had grown up by the time Keeley Davis and Co. came about. This is coupled by the fact that Engine Down’s early material, much like Restorations’, leaves little to be desired and didn’t show any signs of what would come. Don’t @ me.
All pessimism aside: Engine Down is my favorite band of all time. Fuck what you heard, there wasn’t a more important song to come out of the Beltway than “Second of February.” Okayyyyy, maybe “Give Me the Cure,” if I allow myself to be real. But seriously, the fact that 2002’s “Demure” will go down as the album that post-hardcore bros in the 2010s cite as highly influential in magazines like Alt Press almost across the board, yet was released on a label that’s claim to fame is a few casual Frodus records, is genuinely baffling.
If you like Radiohead when they remembered how to hold a guitar like a guitar and not like a cello, go pick up “Demure.” If you like Circa Survive, go pick up “Demure.” If you like the non-brocore Moving Mountains records, go pick up “Demure.” If you like Sparta, go pi….hahahaha okay sorry I forgot no one liked Sparta. Side note while carving figures out of Lone Stars and lamenting about flat circles: Keeley Davis is on Sparta’s only remotely listenable album and replaced Sparta’s frontman in this year’s At the Drive In reunion. Get you a man that can do both.
No one could quite mix the discord (DC punk heads drink) and energy of the instrumentation with the melancholy and fragility of the vocals quite like Engine Down. There’s something to be said for the art of the slowburn. Engine Down Van Gogh’d the shit out of that entire sentiment and bottled it for retail on one perfect disk of ten songs.
I’ll leave you with my favorite song off my favorite album: “Overrated.” It is the Queen Bee of the most important metric of all: LMSU (Lyrics to MySpace Status Updates). “Can I push this pin too hard, to take this point too far?” Fuck me the heck up fam. “I gave your time away to the first smile come my way.” FUCK ME THE HECK UP FAM. Another important metric: hours spent as a youth trying to nail Keeley’s guitar tone for the main riff of the song. Through the roof. I think that’s why the band was so important to me. People talk about how Blink 182’s legacy can be attributed to how relatable the songs are and how anyone could pick up an instrument and play those songs better than Blink themselves in about 30 minutes time. Engine Down encapsulates this feeling to a point, especially on “Overrated,” but turns the screw enough to where you’ll never quite nail what they achieved 100%. That’s a legacy if I’ve ever heard of one.
There will always be scenes to come and go for as long as guitar music remains relevant (like another two years probably). It’s important to look past the Menzingers and the Fugazis of these scenes and remember the Restorations and the Engine Downs. More often that not, they’re the true sign of what’s to come with the next wave. I might forget about Steady Diet of Nothing or Rented World. I’m never forgetting Demure.
Patrick is great. Patrick is correct about a lot of things in this article.
Patrick is on twitter: @expertfrowner
