Chamberlain
Fate's Got A Driver
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NATN Recommended
Chamberlain
Fate's Got A Driver
Doghouse, 1996
RiYL: Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbox, Fugazi, The Police |
The album was actually recorded in 1995 when the band was still called Split Lip. But after abandoning said moniker in favor of Chamberlain in 1996, lead singer David Moore scrapped his original vocal tracks and rerecorded them altogether. The reissue, and the subsequent odds-and-ends CD Songs You May Or May Not Have Heard Before, authoritatively closes the book on the band's Split Lip lineage.
Fate's Got A Driver is thought-provoking and musically adventurous, a rare feat for a band whose members were barely past age 20 when the album was recorded. With nods to the every-man side of Sunny Day Real Estate and the insistent melodicism of Fugazi, Fate's consistently impresses.
It's all the product of lead guitarist Adam Rubenstein's thick, Fugazi-style progressions and David Moore's highly poetic lyrics. Rubenstein leads the way on standout tracks like the locksteping "Yellow Like Gold," the instantly thumping "Her Side Of Sundown" and the gorgeous, acoustic "The Simple Life," connecting the line between The Police's proto-pop-punk and the DC hardcore scene.
The groovy "Uniontown" nods to Vs.-era Pearl Jam, while the steady, pulsating "Street Singer" constructs a ready-made rallying cry: "you're under lock and key and I could break in/but I've never been a thief."
Although he has to strain his voice at times to keep up with the constantly moving melodies, Moore prooves to be well-versed in Dylans Thomas and Bob, alternating between oblique metaphors ("chance is in her glass house, I know / but I know I'm throwing stones," he proudly proclaims in "Her Side Of Sundown") and energetic summations of what may lie ahead ("cause there's a world that I've gotta see / and it quietly waits for me," later in the same song).
The rhythm section provides the cathartic underpinning so crucial to music of this nature. Especially on the encendiary "Drums And Shotguns," drummer Charles Walker transcends standard-issue hardcore stickwork with perfectly placed fills and seamless dynamic shifts. In sum, Fate's is nothing short of an amazing achievement by such a relatively young band.
JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"