Guy Picciotto belts out some nicely imagistic poetry: “Your eyes / Like crashing jets / Fixed in stained glass / But not religious / You should pay rent / In my mind.” Of course, he later finds time to mention the then-current merger of ominous defense contractors Lockheed Corporation and Martin Marietta - this is a Fugazi song, after all. “Do You Like Me” is - no bait-and-switch-here - a track about that hallowed rock ‘n’ roll subject, unrequited love. However, at the 50-second mark of “Do You Like Me”, everything shifts on a dime: Brendan Canty’s snare drum announces itself, and suddenly Fugazi is playing one of the most pop-oriented, straight-forward songs of its career. Coming off of Fugazi’s previous album, the relentlessly noisy and aggressive In on the Kill Taker (1993), listeners to these first few bars likely felt they were witnessing Fugazi turn even more devoutly toward squall and fury. Guitars, processed to sound more like the churning gears of an ancient piece of industrial machinery well in need of some WD-40, clang and clamor in formless dissonance. The first 50 seconds of Red Medicine opener “Do You Like Me” is a nice bait-and-switch.

MacKaye’s empathy is bound to his intelligence - it’s one thing to rail against The Man it’s another thing to actually understand the forces of destruction at work in our society, and MacKaye is up to the task.Ĥ. Eventually, the track explodes into high gear, the guitars clearing their throats and MacKaye barking, “Everybody wants / Somewhere / Somewhere!” The anger feels entirely justified, coming as it does after a slow, ominous build. He sings, his surprisingly confident and restrained tenor proving the perfect accompaniment for his band’s similarly patient instrumentation. “Cashout” tackles the issue of such gentrification - as Ian MacKaye puts it, “Talking about process / And dismissal / Forced removal of the people on the corner.” The choice of subject matter isn’t as striking as MacKaye’s delivery. Of course, as in most major cities, the young and wealthy are spreading out to “transitional” neighborhoods, previously the domain of minorities and lower economic classes. In other words, travel to affluent, predominantly white Northwest D.C., and you might be hard-pressed to believe that the District enjoys one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. Fugazi’s hometown of Washington, D.C., is an interesting city: though the District is over 50% black, de facto lines of racial segregation follow almost ruthlessly strict borders based on neighborhood and ward demarcations.

Fugazi repeater