AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
On the surface, punk and jazz music seemed to be worlds apart. Jazz, with its cerebral, complex arrangements...
(SOUNDBITE OF JAMES BRANDON LEWIS AND JAMES BRANDON LEWIS QUARTET'S "HELIX (LIVE)")
RASCOE: ...Seems to run counter to the gritty, visceral nature of punk rock. But The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis find commonalities between the genres.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE MESSTHETICS AND JAMES BRANDON LEWIS' "CLUTCH")
RASCOE: NPR's Dave Mistich has more on the group and their latest album, "Deface The Currency."
DAVE MISTICH, BYLINE: From the late '80s to the early 2000s, Brendan Canty and Joe Lally were at the very heart of Washington, D.C.'s punk scene. They played for the seminal post-hardcore group Fugazi, Canty as drummer and Lally as bassist.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MISTICH: The band was known not just for its music, but for its social activism...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: This is all about change.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: And I hope you all will consider it seriously...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: ...Instead about your hair color, you know?
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: There's a lot more to change in the world.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MISTICH: ...Whether it was rallying against the Gulf War in front of the White House or playing benefit concerts for an AIDS clinic. Here's Brendan Canty.
BRENDAN CANTY: It was really nice to have that size of a crowd with Fugazi to where you felt like you could really make a difference to a protest or to a benefit.
MISTICH: Fugazi went on an indefinite hiatus in 2003. More than a decade later, Lally and Canty reconnected and started working on some songs.
JOE LALLY: I guess it gave us a reason to get together and something to do when we did get together.
CANTY: When Joe is playing with me, I feel like I have a very strong structure to play around with, you know, and I can mess around a lot more and probably to an annoying degree. But it was like - it's definitely like having, like, a really strong jungle gym to play on.
MISTICH: Canty had also gotten to know a younger local guitarist, Anthony Pirog.
CANTY: He would play Danny Gatton style, you know, country jazz, and then he would play noise, and then he would play with his wife, Janel, with cello. And I just got more and more impressed with him.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE MESSTHETICS' "ONCE UPON A TIME")
MISTICH: If Canty and Lally's history together with Fugazi provides the backbone of The Messthetics, Pirog is the overlapping space in the Venn diagram, the connective tissue that brought the group together. Pirog grew up in the Virginia suburbs outside D.C., listening to an eclectic array of styles, everything from virtuoso jazz players to the region's punk and hardcore scene, including Fugazi.
ANTHONY PIROG: I knew something was brewing in this area, and it was - I just knew these people were not far from me, and I was very excited to know that there was such a diverse musical scene taking place, and I just wanted to be a part of it.
MISTICH: For years after college, Pirog gigged around the D.C. area, taking seemingly every show he was offered.
PIROG: I was playing five to seven nights a week in the area, and one night, it would be a solo noise guitar thing. Then I'd play with my surf band. Then I'd play at Twins Jazz with friends. I had - you know, it was just - I'd back up roots singer-songwriters that were friends, and it was just, like, all over the place.
MISTICH: Pirog says he was doing what he could to make a living, but what he really wanted was to compose and improvise music of his own. Playing with Canty and Lally provided that opportunity.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE MESSTHETICS' "MYTHOMANIA")
MISTICH: Canty says the sessions yielded exciting material from the very beginning.
CANTY: This almost immediately was, I thought, incredibly fun to have so many ideas flowing around at the same time and not easy ideas either. I mean, there - immediately, we're like, let's really do some challenging stuff.
MISTICH: As a trio, The Messthetics quickly recorded and released two albums through the D.C.-based label Dischord Records, an imprint co-founded by Fugazi's Ian MacKaye, Canty and Lally's former bandmate. The Messthetics brand of soaring complex rock and Pirog's connections in the improvisational jazz world left the door open for other possibilities.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE MESSTHETICS AND JAMES BRANDON LEWIS' "EMERGENCE")
MISTICH: For years, Pirog had been collaborating with saxophonist James Brandon Lewis. Lewis says he quickly developed a kinship with the guitarist.
JAMES BRANDON LEWIS: The way we approach melody is very similar, you know, and I think we connected Day 1.
MISTICH: Even though Lewis comes from the jazz world, he says he's always felt an affinity for the ethos of punk.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE MESSTHETICS AND JAMES BRANDON LEWIS' "DEFACE THE CURRENCY")
MISTICH: "Deface The Currency" marks the second album for the group as a quartet. Over the past two years, they played more than a hundred shows together.
LEWIS: It's really beautiful because it's - it always ends up being a mixed audience. You know, you got your old punk rockers in the building. You got jazz people in the building. So it's always - that's what's been beautiful about this experience is that our worlds collide in very healthy, natural ways.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE MESSTHETICS AND JAMES BRANDON LEWIS' "DEFACE THE CURRENCY")
MISTICH: Lewis says he and his bandmates are aiming to make a statement right out of the gate on their new album, another installment from the legendary jazz imprint Impulse Records.
LEWIS: It feels like we're not trying to ease into anything. We're just like, bam, we hit you in the face right off of the first track.
MISTICH: The album is instrumental, but Pirog says The Messthetics are conveying something important.
PIROG: The fact that we're doing this type of instrumental music in this way, I mean, I don't have to tell you what we believe in. You can sense it, and that really means the most to me because there're our ideas that we are trying to get across.
MISTICH: Pirog won't say exactly what they're trying to get across, but Lewis hints it's in the spirit of the D.C. punk scene some of his bandmates helped form decades ago.
LEWIS: I think that energy - there is an edge to the music that speaks to the current climate.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE MESSTHETICS AND JAMES BRANDON LEWIS' "SERPENT TONGUE (SLIGHT RETURN)")
MISTICH: As for Lally, he sees a through line between what he and Canty have been involved with since the mid-'80s.
LALLY: I think this is what we do, and it's very hard to divorce yourself from what you do. It's just all in there. It's all in what inspired us in Fugazi, and it's a continuation.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE MESSTHETICS AND JAMES BRANDON LEWIS' "SERPENT TONGUE (SLIGHT RETURN)")
MISTICH: The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis are set to hit the road together this spring. Beyond that run, expect the spirit of social activism to continue with their shows around D.C.
Dave Mistich, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE MESSTHETICS AND JAMES BRANDON LEWIS' "SERPENT TONGUE (SLIGHT RETURN)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.