Get Evens

iTunes Review

While Fugazi lie dormant, and fans eagerly await an official follow up to 2001’s The Argument, Ian Mackaye continues to busy himself with DC side project The Evens, a collaboration between Mackaye and former Warmers drummer Amy Farina. On Get Evens Mackaye and Farina stay true to the subdued template laid out on their debut, maintaining the intimate atmosphere and DIY production values that made The Evens one of the best releases of 2005. They deliver their choruses in rough plaintive harmonies that lend their incisive political proclamations a sense of much needed urgency. Beneath this wavering vocal interplay Farina lays down a network of busily skittering percussion laced with frenzied, inventive brushwork and aggressive tom thumping. His unhinged playing provides Get Evens with its only link to Mackaye’s avant-garde minded work with Fugazi. While Farina rages in the background, Mackaye weaves accessible folk pop from familiar major chords, creating songs whose simplicity recalls the unfettered earnestness of early ‘60’s folkies like Phil Ochs and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot.