Nearly every song on Worn In Red’s recently released full-length, In the Offing, follows the structure of penultimate track “Mise En Abyme.” Big musical shifts come in tempo and rhythm, but volume and tone remain set to “stun.” Lyrically, In the Offing prefers to provoke questions rather than provide answers, and the vocabulary swings between muscular idioms and literary theory. There aren’t any choruses to speak of; Worn In Red has zero time to waste on the comfort of ritual sing-alongs.
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Worn In Red releases In the Offing with a gig at Random Row Books on Saturday, November 21. The show starts at 9:30pm, and the cover is a $5 suggested donation. Bring extra for the album! |
And then there’s that title, “Mise en Abyme.” Meaning, infinite reflection—looking into a chasm of mirrors and seeing yourself again and again, stretching towards the horizon. But relenting is for the weak-willed, the bloodless and soft-spoken, isn’t it? In the Offing is an eight-song confrontation and no one gets off easy, including Worn In Red itself.
O.K. by them. Lead-off track “Vital Joys” is a mission statement for Charlottesville’s longest running hardcore band, as well as a table of the Worn In Red elements: incantatory drumming, double dagger guitar riffs (no solos) and growled lyrical phrases capped by! Exclamation! Points! It’s a style of punk authoritatively tackled by the band’s new label, No Idea Records, and Worn in Red’s command of it here should quickly and deservedly nab ’em the love of any fans of Hot Water Music.
Of course, not everyone in town sweats it out with Worn In Red in the Tokyo Rose basement or at the band’s other (very) occasional local gigs. So, can a band command a niche genre and still bring in a bigger audience? Can an album deliver an experience that recreates and, in some respects, bests Worn In Red’s formidable live set?
Yes, but it falls to the listeners to stick around, so all Worn In Red can do is emphatically swing away. In the Offing’s three-song opening suite—“Vital Joys,” followed by “Piled Like Bricks” and the mercurial, winning “When People Have Something to Say”—is masterful enough to lure in outliers. “Resigned Not Resigning” slips briefly into a Fugazi bridge, and it’s a welcome bit of mystic punk. “And You Knew” breaks the band’s lyrical economy and spends two wordless minutes in a post-punk seethe that resolves itself in empathy, then unleashes a last-word scream.
“Fort Reno,” Offing’s longest track, both recalls the band’s salad days and projects a bit into the future. “We endure on this code: ‘Only gain through giving,’” shouts singer Brendan Murphy at the album’s end. Truthfully, Worn In Red sounds strong enough to endure just about anything on In the Offing—any audience gain is reaffirmation. Here’s hoping that a new batch of listeners join Worn In Red’s longtime supporters to both give and gain unexpected riches.
