Rites Of Spring - Rites Of Spring (Album Review)

 

Rites Of Spring - Rites Of Spring

(1985)


My copy: Remastered repress from an unspecified year.


The explosive self-titled debut from Rites Of Spring is widely considered to be one of the first albums in the emo genre. Two members of Rites Of Spring (Guy Picciotto and Brendon Canty) would go on to further break the conventions of hardcore music in Fugazi. 

“Spring” wastes no time kicking the album off with frantic, distorted chord changes and a heavy emphasis on Picciotto’s dire vocal melodies. The production of the record is interesting as the bass tones are mostly pushed back, especially the kick drum, so as to make room for the soaring mid tones of the guitar.  The core structural philosophy of Rites Of Spring truly sets in on “Deeper Than Inside”: dense, minor passages are often smashed against happy, major reprieves that wouldn’t suit most early hardcore writings. 

“For Want Of” fully demonstrates a desire to break out of conventions, with distorted lead guitars breaking into crystalline arpeggios. “For Want Of” is also probably the catchiest song from a conventional standpoint, and even has time to detour into a bridge that experiments with panning. More clever writing is snuck into “Hain’s Point” which bounces from typical hardcore drumming into a brief dance beat from time to time. “All There Is” again uses percussion to break the fatigue that begins to set in when you realize almost every song is set to the same BPM. 

A key element aiding the cult status of Rites Of Spring are the animalistic vocals that crack and show no sign of restraint; this coupled with thoughtful lyrics that wax poetic on love and mental illness built a following of people who were more interested in the emotional side of Picciotto’s performance. Rites Of Spring may have helped to kickstart the eventual downfall of post-hardcore as it feigned to third-wave bastardizations and dreadful pop-punk bands, but at least they did it with charm. “Drink Deep” sees refreshing vocal harmonizations that would have likely been seen as too soft for other hardcore albums of the time. 

“Theme (If I Started To Cry),” “By Design,” and “Remainder” are a bit too by the books and threaten to overshadow the interesting writing choices before “Persistent Vision” freshens things with a layered bridge featuring reversed sound effects and strange vocal calls. “Nudes” deconstructs punk and hardcore the most with vibrant tambourine and a danceable mid-tempo beat backed further by the slightly chorus-touched guitar. “End On End” strips down to feedback and strange bass meandering that almost totally drops to silence before everything picks up again, careening over the edge with the most intense bout of jamming on the album so far. Rites Of Spring fades out abruptly, only to end with a sample from Igor Stravinsky’s (composer of the Rites Of Spring ballet for which the band is named) autobiography. 

Rites Of Spring is the sound of emotional chaos. Guy Picciotto’s howls put the “manic” in “manic-depressive,” with this energy only further backed by a semi-subversive set of punishing hardcore tunes. Not quite as impressive as the precision of the later Fugazi records, but still something worth beholding at least once. 

This repress goes for cheap as of writing this.


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