The last time drummer Brendan Canty and bassist Joe Lally were in a band together, they were the rhythmic architects for Fugazi, an organization whose decade and a half of disciplined progressivism provided a necessary bridge between the zenith of late-punk expression and everything alternative in rock that followed. In 2016, the two were enlisted by guitarist Anthony Pirog in a conspiracy to subvert and reimagine the power trio, bringing fully into the 21st Century a form that may have reached near perfection with Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys on the very first day of the 1970s.

With a self-titled recording scheduled for release in the Spring of 2018 on Dischord, the Messthetics will widen the reach of a decisive instrumental music that so far, they have only shared with a privileged handful of east coast and southern audiences. Across its eight original compositions and one cover, Anthony guides the sound through complex changes and harmonic densities that might compound, but never confound or muddy its connection with the listener’s body. Recorded by Brendan in their practice space, the group’s debut gives Anthony ample opportunities to swap guitar textures and styles as freely as an octopus changes patterns.

Brendan’s kit has a big heavy bell that he brought back from the Fugazi days. He maneuvers through this rhythmically shifty music with a fluid briskness that is periodically disrupted by the clang of his bell. Joe spent 8 years in Italy, among other things, woodshedding on eastern rhythms counted in 7 and 13, perfect preparation for the oddly-metered work of the Messthetics. He brings a rock-solid foundation to the groove at the same time playing a harmonic complement as ambitious and interesting as Anthony’s lines.

Bands can be dangerous when their members have accrued enough mileage to see their chops season into something like musical wisdom. When that understanding has the rare opportunity to percolate through a collaborative environment founded in love and anchored in gratitude, well, then shit can get rather intense. Anthony Pirog writes difficult music because original music usually is. Yet the ideas that he feeds through the Messthetics, are embraced by the Canty-Lally time machine, not just with precision and nuance, but with soul, joy, and groove. These last three are, indeed, the big guns in this spiritual war that music must become in the post-Trump era.

The initial concept was to mix noise/improv guitar with dance grooves – a kind of apocalyptic dance party where the beat keeps you moving, but the guitarist relentlessly terrorizes you.  The first track, “Mythomania” retains elements of that posture, but as reality has itself become more daunting, Anthony – a fearless guitarist – has moved closer to his listeners, and is now willing to astonish without being so confrontational about it. That doesn’t mean the Messthetics in any way retreat from the responsibilities of a “hard” sound, just that its volume and edge never eat the bold structural ideas that define this new music. Anthony will even lubricate his tricky time signatures with energetic two-note riffs to keep the listener head-bobbing through the twisting structures. And when their collective voice is thick and heavy (like on “Crowds and Power”), it is neither ponderous nor plodding.  Their performances and this debut recording have a lift and buoyancy that reflect back into the audience the love and gratitude at the foundation of this trio’s journey

— Dr. Thomas Stanley (aka Bushmeat Sound)

James Brandon Lewis

I would think James would have a personal reference for such a title as Eye of I, the poetic ululation of the trio of words, not unlike the sound of this particular human trio of music messengers. To my mind, Eye of I is in reference to a focus, and a focus which is not entirely disciplinarian but one infused with the spiritual. Having played a tiny bit with James at a loose session some years back, I felt the sound of meditation, prayer, and thoughtfulness in both a search and an acceptance of vibratory creative impulse. We just went into an elemental wave of sonics as a free thought recognition of peace and bliss in concordance with all the wild conflict this universe has in both its real world and dreamscape. The music went outside of any physical construct of time, space and judgment, feeling perfectly imperfect as a cosmologic unification of open-hearted love.

James’ compositions are at once the sole realizations of his own “living music” concepts, the aura of actually “seeing” the music as it is conjured and gifted from the composer’s mind, spirit, and body, as well as being defined to a profound degree by the interaction of players James finds himself compatriot to. The JBL Trio on Eye Of I is James on tenor, cellist Christopher Hoffman and percussionist Max Jaffe—augmented on two tracks by the guest appearance of cornetist Kirk Knuffke, and joined on a third by Anthony Pirog, Brendan Canty. and Joe Lally of The Messthetics—players who have been on the scene, and who are obviously in the mix for JBL as these serious soul serenaders are not afraid to dig in hard to the dynamics being proffered, always allowing a sophistication to present a sentient, sometimes placid (with youngblood rambunction, underlying and playful) groove, a groove dealing with intellect as natural guidance—music reflecting the masters and finding its own communitarian grace.

It’s a channeling I recall picking up whilst in the stream of our collaborative one-time hit. It was in the context of a few other musicians in the room, all compatriot heads into mystic modes coming in from all directions of history defined by experience, truth, determination, and desire while kicking hard against ignorance, discrimination, incrimination and power-hungry, demonic souls lost to greed and ego death. The music was the answer to every query in doubt to piety, the music was its own divine system of belief.

— Thurston Moore, 2022 London