I can't tell you up front that There to Here is of any interest to anyone who isn't already a Fugazi fan. I can tell you that this isn't just Fugazi bassist Joe Lally, but Joe Lally and Friends, including most of Fugazi, Amy Farina from the Evens, and drummer Jason Kourkounis, to name a few. That means there is some Evens-esque low-volume pop like "The Resigned" and some funk workouts like the title track where it's hard to believe it's not Brendan Canty on drums (he is conspicuously absent here). It also means that if you love Fugazi so much that you loved the Instrument soundtrack, there are at least one or two tracks to satiate your desire for that rubbery legato punk-funk.
However, "minimal" doesn't even begin to cover the feel of There to Here. Ascetic is more like it. This is music allergic to anything but Joe Lally's modest, sincere voice, the fluid thumbing of bass strings, and the occasional drum accompaniment. When friends stop by to contribute a few scraps of melody, they're often the highlights of the album. "The Resigned" adds backing vocals from both Ian MacKaye and Amy Farina of the Evens to its strutting groove, the bass in "Billiards" makes room for a few blues licks, and the title track makes great use of incidental guitar noise, sounding far less claustrophobic than the rest of the record.
When it's just Lally solo or he and a drummer, there's a hymn-like simplicity to tracks like "X-Ray the Lullaby" or "Message From Earth". The spoken word track "Sons and Daughters" has some painful and awkward lines that make a minute feel like an hour just to deliver the punchline, though it lands: "We say 'Us' when we really mean our sons and daughters." "Sons and Daughters" isn't even crippled by Lally's delivery, as he works around the blandness of his voice, here and on the rest of the record, with a delivery that further illustrates his knack for rhythm.
It's the content of the lyrics, or rather their crushing earnestness, that really sinks it. "The Resigned" and "Sons and Daughters" being the few tracks with any artistic conceit in their lyrics, most being like "Pick a War", with straightforward and uninsightful protest just for the sake of it. Fugazi's monstrous success can be attributed in part to lyrical ambiguity, with messages that can be taken personally or politically; that's not the case here. There to Here is an effective record, but only for a specific audience of simple-groove-digging, minimal-arrangement-tolerating, far-left-leaning, and punk-loving music fanatics. Which doesn't necessarily make you a Fugazi fan...
