Egg Hunt -- Egg Hunt

Egg Hunt

Egg Hunt

Dischord Records, 1986

Egg Hunt was a one-off side project put together by Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson three years after the pair had last played together in Minor Threat. Dubbing themselves and the lone seven-incher resulting from the collaboration "Egg Hunt" because the whole thing went down over Easter weekend (while the duo was in England meeting with Southern Studios owner John Loder to discuss the distribution of the still-young Dischord's releases in Europe), the disk contains two songs:

Track 1. "Me and You." A song MacKaye and Nelson had been jamming on for several years prior to the Egg Hunt project, "Me and You" is a slower, droning track dominated by mesmeric, loop-like guitar riffs. Although there are bits of spoken word sprinkled throughout the recording, MacKaye and Nelson's mantra-like delivery of "me and you" for the duration of the song combines with the gradually increasing intensity of the guitars and drums to create a trance-like effect that eventually culminates in a speedy crescendo of pure headbanging bliss.

Track 2. "We All Fall Down." MacKaye actually wrote the B-side for his first post-Minor Threat band, Embrace, who decided against recording the track. Significantly, "We All Fall Down" marks a transitional period in MacKaye's development as a vocalist. Although there are traces of the vitriolic bark one associates with his earlier bands, the perceptive listener will stop for a second, perhaps blink a moment, and recognize that MacKaye is actually singing. Most impressive, however, is the complexity of MacKaye and Nelson's instrumentation, which anticipates the stunning trajectory of the former's songwriting in Fugazi. If the restrictive walls of mid-eighties hardcore were still standing when Egg Hunt went into the studio, they were rubble by the time the stylus lifted after "We All Fall Down" finished, heralding the arrival of Fugazi's revitalization of the DC scene.

Sobriquet Grade: 89 (B+).