Make It Fit＜Colored Vinyl＞

ボストンの伝説的EMO/ポスト・ハードコアバンド、24年作を発表!!

2005年にGeoff Farina(Vo,G)の聴覚障害でやむを得ず解散となった、ボストンの伝説的EMO/ポスト・ハードコアバンド"KARATE"の2024年作アルバムがNumero Groupよりリリース。
過去作品の再発キャンペーンに合わせて再結成&ツアーを行っていたKARATE。Geoff Farinaの頭脳とバンドの長年のコラボレーターであるAndy Hongと共に制作された10曲もの新しい物語がドロップ。約20年ぶりとなる新曲で本作は通算7枚目となるアルバムとなった。

For a little over a decade in the 90s and 2000s, Karate held one of the more interesting places in the post-hardcore scene. The band started out with a style of precise, thoughtfully crafted rock informed by the D.C./Dischord Records punk scene and gradually infused it with jazz guitar elements and experimentation with song structure and composition. They made multiple records that were far ahead of their time before ceasing operations sometime around 2005, and reunited in 2022 after a reissue campaign of their long out-of-print albums attracted new waves of interest in them. Make It Fit is Karates seventh studio album, and their first set of completely new songs since Pockets was released 20 years earlier. Though they were never a band to stay in one discipline for too long -- their first two records could be slow even by slowcore standards, and they abandoned that sound for extended jazziness quickly -- Make It Fit is largely an entirely different sound than anything the band has attempted before. Amplified tempos and energy are the backbone of upbeat songs like album-opener "Defendants," the Clash-recalling "Cannibals" and "People Aint Folk." These straightforward and melodic rockers have the same spirit as early Ted Leo and the Pharmacists material, down to the guitar moves that nod to Thin Lizzy and the way a steady stream of charged lyrics decorate relatively minimal song skeletons. The Ted Leo similarities continue in the punk-minded grooves and dub echo treatment on "Rattle the Pipes." Vocalist/guitarist Geoff Farinas hard-studied and jazz-steeped guitar style comes to the forefront on the extended solos of songs like "Around the Dial" or in the time signature switch-up ending of "Fall to Grace." Karate even gets into their own, slightly stiff take on Steely Dan-styled funk-rock on "Three Dollar Bill" before closing the album with "Silence, Sound," a hushed and elegantly sad slow song that recalls the emo roots of their earliest material. Karate fans who were expecting a faithful re-creation of the bands old sound might be disappointed with the new ground they cover on Make It Fit, but viewed as the next step in an ongoing journey thats never lingered too long in one mode, the album makes perfect sense. Karate exhibit more verve and fun here than on much of their previous output, and continue to push themselves into new forms regardless of how dissimilar to their earlier iterations those forms may be. That ethos on its own is commendable, and the best results of it on Make It Fit are proof that Karates ever-evolving approach is working. ~ Fred Thomas