For Against – December

Words on Music has done it again. By releasing For Against’s first album, Echelons, a year or so ago, the label made an important vinyl-only recording available to a lot of fans who had given up any hope of ever hearing those nine songs digitally, as well as exposing the band to a new crop of fans. Now the label has reissued the second album, December, and once again made some excellent music available that otherwise would’ve been hard to get.

December came out originally on Independent Project Records in 1988. As good a roster as IPR had a the time, none of its other bands could touch For Against. Echelons may have first put For Against on the map, but December more than fulfilled that album’s promise and cemented the band’s position as one of the best of their time. December did come out on CD in the early 90s, but after being out of print for a while, Words on Music decided to put it out again and include a couple of videos with it as well.

Most of the tracks on December show off the things that make the album so memorable: the driving drums, the moody bass lines, the brilliant guitar work, and the lyrical themes of alienation and regret. One thing that distinguishes this album from others like it has to be the energy that the band maintains. Other good bands of the time (and later) – such as Disco Inferno and now-labelmates The Lucy Show – took pretty standard rock and pop formulas and made them a little darker. For Against does this also but augments its sound with a rare energy and conviction. Of course the rhythm section figures most prominently in this formula, but the tone and precision of Harry Dingman’s guitar contribute as well. The band knows when to hang back and build tension and when to let loose the hounds.

“Sabres” opens the album, beginning with a few spare guitar chords, a moving bass line, and a regular bass-drum beat before launching into sprint. The song continues this alternating pattern of a sound that is spare and patient followed by an energetic rush. It’s a pattern For Against repeats on a majority of the songs here, in fact. But no songs sound less than organic or duplicative of any of the others. It seems to be their signature style, and it has a way of emphasizing the energy of the more active parts by offsetting them with the more patient ones. It’s something that The Police did very well, and based on drummer Greg Hill’s Copeland-esque maneuvers, I’m sure that the one trio inspired the other.

As an aside, the production on this album favors no particular instrument while capturing each nicely. The band uses a decent mix of stereo separation to give the recordings a full sound. Sometimes you find the guitars double-tracked, with the left and right channels playing the same lines with minor variations.

“Stranded in Greenland” and “Svengali” work masterfully. On “Greenland,” the verses have a few guitar notes thrown into a spacious melody, moving into verses that begin with rapid picking and end with powerful chording that builds until it fills the space. “They Said” and “The Effect” come in the middle of the album and slow things down a little. The songs are evenly paced and move things away from the style of the preceding three tracks. They’re dark and moody, though, recalling the band’s earliest recordings captured on the six-song EP In the Marshes.

The title track to December, as with the title track from Echelons, has to be the most fully realized composition here. It’s beautifully done. It takes you through sadness, loneliness, regret, and (almost) anger, right through to an ending that could be either the most sad or the most hopeful one of the album. The song’s crescendo two-thirds of the way through can give you chills if you connect with it.

The final three songs equal the opening three in intensity and beauty. “Paperwhites” has a lot of space in its verses. The bass line and the bass drum keep the song moving while the guitar picks a few delayed overtones. “Clandestine High Holy” closes the album stunningly. Somewhat reminiscent of “Synchronicity II” as it starts, the song finds the band at its most raw and inspired, as powerful as anything else on the CD. The quiet, airy bridge in the song breaks things up just enough to remind you of how subtle the band can be – just before launching headlong into the final, restive passage of the song. There, the guitar pattern repeats three instead of the expected four times, not quite giving you the resolution you expect. It’s perfect.

As mentioned ealier, the CD features two music videos: one for “Autocrat” and one for “Echelons,” two tracks from the album Echelons. Both can be a little clumsy at times, but for independently produced videos from the late 80s, they’re also gems. Plus, “Echelons” lets you see the band actually playing together (albeit, oddly enough, at times in the middle of a field and on the side of a road). You do, however, get a feel for the intensity of their playing as you watch the musicians move into the concluding parts of the song. I probably would’ve purchased the CD if only for the videos, and I wager that I’m not the only one out there who would have, such is the band’s effect on its critics and fans. Just ask Jack Rabid or the folks at Words on Music, who did us all another huge favor by releasing December again. I feel indebted.