Black Eyes

Rate It! Avg: 4.5 (65 ratings)
Sample Album
Black Eyes album cover
Album Information
EDITOR'S PICK

Total Tracks: 10   Total Length: 31:37

eMusic Review 0

Avatar Image
Joe Gross

eMusic Contributor

Joe Gross hails from Falls Church, VA, one of the Chocolate City's most vanilla suburbs. He has written for Spin, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, the Washingt...more »

04.22.11
Had these young lions been based in Brooklyn rather than D.C., this would likely stand as an early 21st-century punk landmark.
Label: Dischord Records

Had this come out on almost any label — or, had these young lions been based in Brooklyn rather than D.C. — this would likely stand as an early 21st-century punk landmark. No Wave-y polyrhythms, art-funk bass, free-jazz noise urges, shifty keyboards, roaring guitars, vaguely queer lyrical subtext, lots of instrument trading — the profile in The Fader practically writes itself. But it was on Dischord instead of DFA, and Black Eyes became a footnote. The follow-up, Coughs, was both more experimental and released posthumously, as seems to be the case with a lot of Dischord bands.

Write a Review 1 Member Review

Please register before you review a release. Register

user avatar

Astonishingly good.

BrooklynSarah

This record stands as a high water mark for post-punk this decade and should get some sort of prize for critical under-appreciation. It's been six years after I first heard it and I still listen to it frequently. I don't know what more to say about it than that.

Recommended Albums

eMusic Features

0

Dischord Proto-Emo

By Joe Gross, eMusic Contributor

As co-founder Ian MacKaye has noted, in spite of its punk pedigree, Dischord Records is, for all intents and purposes, a folk label, documenting the music made by a particular community. Various names have been given to the music that community has made: hardcore punk ( Minor Threat, everyone on 1981: The Year in Seven Inches) to the tragically-named emo (Rites of Spring, Embrace, Beefeater, etc.) to post-emocore whatever (see below). The scene has received… more »

They Say All Music Guide

Black Eyes self-titled debut displays a band with a hold on the experimental side of D.C. punk — a path paved by Fugazi and, particularly in this case, Q and Not U. This five-piece band takes dub, bass-driven grooves, and kooky vocals of the Liars and Q and Not U’s off-kilter dance punk and plays them grittier, from the violent narrative of “Someone Has His Fingers Broken” to the oblique sexual politics of “A Pack of Wolves.” But Black Eyes, despite an unstoppable cacophony on insane songs like the Queen-on-caffeine “King’s Dominion” and the spazzy “Day Turns to Night,” never really have the terse drive of Fugazi or the accessible hooks of Q and Not U. This album will have to remain the mark of a band’s crazy potential and perhaps a warning siren of what is to come. – Charles Spano

more »