It's tough to imagine Fugazi without Joe Lally. His bass is the first thing we hear on "Waiting Room", and since then his supple, spacey, propulsive basslines have anchored too many jams to count. Fugazi's ideological ferocity and hometown boosterism always got the press, but they also had one of the most capable and economical rhythm sections working; Lally and drummer Brendan Canty's beats could imply funk or reggae without ever drifting from their post-punk rigor, and they had a way of maintaining absolute stillness while Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto thrashed off into the void. From Fugazi's 1987 inception until they went on hiatus sometime after The Argument, Lally remained among the most dependable foot soldiers in punk rock, a born sideman who made everyone around him sound stronger and more focused.
But it's equally hard to imagine Joe Lally without Fugazi. At his old band's shows, Lally would lurk off to the side of the stage, bobbing his bald head in monastic concentration while MacKaye barked and Picciotto wriggled. Every so often, he'd move toward centerstage to deliver a whispery lead vocal, but then he'd just recede back into the shadows just as quickly. He never exactly came off as someone eager to be noticed. And yet here we have a Fugazi-less Lally. Nothing Is Underrated is Lally's second solo album following 2006's There to Here, and the ghosts of Fugazi are still all over this thing. MacKaye and Picciotto both make cameos, as do various other D.C. scene-vets. And Lally's basslines here are basically Fugazi basslines without Fugazi songs attached. As basslines, they're great: sparse and ringing and indelible. But they scream out for more than the unfinished song-sketches Lally grants them here.
The main problem here, if it's a problem at all, is that Nothing Is Underrated never sounds anything less than pleasant, which means it always sounds polite. Besides the basslines, Lally's low-key mutter of a voice is the focal point. Everything else comes in minimal flourishes: muted brush-drums, warm swells of feedback, something that sounds like a jewsharp being run through an effects pedal. Lally's lyrics usually take the form of vague, aphoristic musings, doodles and half-ideas that don't bear much scrutiny ("No destiny/ As seen on TV," that sort of thing). As background music, it's not unpleasant; there's a soft, soothing tone in Lally's voice, and he never throws any leftfield noises at us. When he ran the indie Tolotta, Lally released records from D.C. psych- and doom-metal bands Dead Meadow and Spirit Caravan, and that influence shows up from time to time in the form of freaked-out acid-rock organ, but that stuff stays firmly in check, never giving the songs the electric charge they might need. Even "Motora", which is mostly just Lally reciting pseudo-beat poetry over guitar feedback, somehow manages to sound polite and unobtrusive, which is surely some kind of accomplishment.
As nice as all this sounds, though, the sense of near-messianic purpose that drove Fugazi is missed. But near the album's end, Lally at least moves towards it on two songs. "Mistaken Identity" rests on nothing but bass and reverb, but Lally's lyrics make for a really simple, powerful, and direct statement of negation: "I am not a list of desires/ I am not the hopes of others/ I am not a warehouse of memory." And "Painfully Aware" has some seriously funky Curtis Mayfield cymbals to go with its monster bassline; it's a simple stylistic flourish that pushes the track that much further toward Fugazi territory. Most of the time, though, Nothing Is Underrated is an easy record to like but a hard one to love.
