Music Feeds’ Love Letter To A Record series asks artists to reflect on their relationship with the music they love and share stories about how it has influenced their lives. Here, Tim McIlrath– the leader of Chigago punk icons Rise Against – has penned an incredible ode Fugazi‘s 1989 compilation album ’13 Songs’ and its lasting impact on him as a musician, songwriter and activist.
It comes as Rise Against return after four years with their new LP ‘Ricochet’ – a massive, unifying rock record that’s as thought-provoking as it is anthemic. Produced by GRAMMY winner Catherine Marks and mixed by Alan Moulder, its 12 tracks tackle the chaos of our hyper-stimulated, outrage-driven world, urging listeners to slow down, think, and recognise how our actions ripple outwards. McIlrath calls it a meditation on our “collective inter-connectedness” — how every decision, from global politics to personal choices, ricochets through other lives. You can stream the record in full right here, or read McIlrath’s love letter to Fugazi’s ’13 Songs’ down below.
Rise Against – ‘Ricochet’
Tim McIlrath, Rise Against: My desert island band is Fugazi, and the album that first introduced Fugazi to me was 13 Songs. It came out in 1989. I was 11 years old, so I wasn’t “there” when it came out. It was probably still Janet Jackson and Vanilla Ice on the radio back then. But I had gotten into Minor Threat, and then started to get into Fugazi all around the same time. And it blew my mind just realising the leap that those artists, and artists like Ian MacKaye, took from a very traditional punk band in Minor Threat into 13 Songs, it almost had a reggae vibe to it!
It was an important record to me because it was political, and it was an important record to me sonically, watching this guy just transform himself as an artist but also be able to still create that same energy that he created in Minor Threat. So, I loved it sonically, lyrically, and I loved the way it was presented as a very affordable record released by the band. They would tour and play $5 shows in really unorthodox venues where they could control the ticketing, and there was no bar. They really did things on their own. The whole band and the whole package was kind of amazing. And what I learned from them was: don’t just re-tread the same territory your favourite bands did. Create your own thing. Make your own thing. What you do, you’ll make it cool because you do it, but you have to be authentic to yourself to do it. And I took that lesson away from Fugazi.
I’m pretty sure that my friend would have borrowed/stolen 13 Songs from his older sister’s collection and brought it to my house, and literally was like: “you have to fucking hear this!”. It was like contraband. All those records back then, it felt like you might be doing something wrong just listening to the stuff, or if you got caught with it. And then after we listened to it we also had to try to get it back to her. I remember his sister was into more gothy The Jesus and Mary Chain-type stuff, so when she would come across this heavier stuff, she would pass it on to her little brother and then we would hear it. And that was our connection because back then, before the internet and just growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, any information about new bands or new music was something that required a lot of effort. I can still picture listening to 13 Songs, and it was definitely my friend’s sister’s record we had borrowed. And we just played the shit out of it, it just absolutely blew our minds.
‘Waiting Room’ is an obvious favourite on that album, but ‘Burning Too’ was that kind of environmental rally. I think I wrote a paper about it in high school too, I remember you had to pick a song, and I remember writing a paper about Environmental Too. “Anytime but now / Anywhere but here / Anyone but me / I’ve got to think about my own life”…these were lyrics from 1989 and these were problems that we’re still having, and a message that is still relevant today.
Further Reading
Rise Against Announce New Album ‘Ricochet’
Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath: “I Don’t Want To Just Sing About The Symptoms, I Want To Sing About The Actual Disease”
Love Letter To A Record: Stefan From The Montreals On Rise Against’s ‘The Sufferer & The Witness’
