10 years ago this week, if Discogs is to be believed, Give released a compilation of their 7” singles entitled Singles Going Confetti on Deranged Records. A few other record labels released it overseas in 2012 but I needed an occasion to post about it this week, so I’m going off of the Deranged Records release date. This collection of some of the D.C. band’s earliest works is a monument to everything that made them different from their peers at the time and it set the course for everything popular in hardcore 10 years later.
I think what’s always drawn me to Give is the command of aesthetics and how there is nothing in the music that isn’t connected to the message. The band’s 7” records were all packaged the same way, with their daisy logo in the top left corner and a photo of a band member with a color overlay. While each record label had the same layout, similar to old Motown or Atlantic records, they all had a slight twist on the actual label of the record that made it clear that each release was put out by someone else. Each record also had the huge 45 hole instead of the regular 7” hole, somewhat in tribute to the legacy of recorded music itself. That tribute carries throughout their run as a band in that they’re always citing their references and wearing them on their sleeve.
That level of respect to tradition is one thing that made Give so unique. It’s almost anathemic in punk rock. Even if your art does have influences, and of course it does, you certainly can’t talk about them. That’s passé! That’s gauche! The care and level of detail that went into releases was already beyond what most bands cared to do. From the jump, they took control of their branding and their aesthetic itself was so, so different from anyone else at the time. You also knew what you were getting. Technicolor, off-the-wall music. Hardcore has always been aggressive and oozing with machismo but every Give record had a daisy on the front of it. It was a peace sign instead of a middle finger. Compared to other records of the early 2010s, they were putting a carnation in the gun barrel of modern hardcore.
Give’s Singles Going Confetti can be had in several different variations for great prices on Discogs. I personally picked up an Assault Records pressing of the album, with alternate artwork, hand-numbered out of 110. I am a bit of a Give completionist and while I won’t be buying any other pressings of this record, I do own all of the 7” records that make this record up. Speaking of that, what a cool way to make the art on this record. Compiling the covers of 7”s to go together on this record still makes a really beautiful and cohesive album cover. That’s just one of those things that seems like it’s lost now that we’re relegated to a digital-only realm. Who cares what the art looks like? It’s on your phone and you’re not touching it. You can’t read lyrics if they’re not handed to you on Spotify.
Give’s mission statement can be summed up in their first song on the comp, “I Am Love.” “I Am Love” is the most important hardcore song of the 2010s, in my opinion. It’s such a departure from how anything else sounded. It sounds like Shelter meets Mudhoney. It asks the question, “What if Soundgarden did too much acid, missed their meetings with A&M Records, and ended up selling beads on Haight-Ashbury?” It’s got some funk to it but it’s not RHCP. It’s primed for moshing but it’s not No Warning.
At the time, Trapped Under Ice was the biggest band in hardcore and their lyrics were overtly negative. They weren’t negative to the extent of the nihilism from bands like Blacklisted or anything, but it’s about a lot of betrayal by self and by others. Reality unfolding from the streets of Baltimore. Then there’s this band from down the street in D.C. who just dropped a song about being full of so much love that you’re willing to be vulnerable and get hurt yourself. Hurting is part of sacrifice. Sacrifice and concession is love. Love is what will win.
If Give sounds like anyone else, it’s Lion Of Judah. The two bands shared members and some tone, but LOJ was a little more at home with the Lockin’ Out sound from the early 2000s. While bands like Mental and Lion Of Judah cribbed from Supertouch, Give was taking cues from Embrace and Rites of Spring. Don’t get me wrong, Give took some from Supertouch, too, but they were more concentrated on this blend of alt-rock by way of Revolution Summer. “Boots of Faith” sounds like “Said Gun” by Embrace until the chorus, where it breaks down into this grunge chorus with a huge riff. It’s dancing back and forth from the ‘80s to the ‘90s in a way that feels natural and new. Here’s a video of them playing it live. In another rejection of hardcore norms, Give is a band full of long-haired dudes. Their frontman, John Scharbach, is in all white. At the time, post-hardcore was similar to what it is now: black Vans and black denim as far as the eye could see. Scharbach, on the other hand, is wearing Air Max 95s in most of the live videos you can find.
The b-side of the Boots of Faith 7” is the pseudo-title track of the comp, “Going Confetti.” It’s clean like power-pop but somewhere more on the rock-and-roll side of things and still decidedly in the realm of hardcore. “Crucial” John has a bark like Henry Rollins in Black Flag but leans more introspective. “We don’t ever need to dream, we create everything.” DIY.
I could wax on and on about this band. There’s a flame in my heart that burns for this band and it won’t go out. It’s the band I go back to the most, over and over again, and I’m never going to get tired of them. Even if, sonically, nobody’s attempted to go where Give went, that’s okay. I’m still finding ways to geek out about their legacy. They mean everything to me. The idea that love will win, that art will win, it’s paramount to why I even started writing about music in the first place. It’s about doing something and being happy enough to keep doing it, regardless of who’s watching.
There’s a line in “I Am Love” that says “Your world won’t harden me. In response, I’m growing softer gradually.” It’s just this wonderful line that sticks out in opposition to everything else in the genre. I go back to this song and this lyric constantly. The world will always demand you get harder and make it tough for you to do the right thing. Push back against it by being soft and being present for your fellow man. You can still say “fuck the world and everything in it,” but offer your own world outside of the one that’s failed us. Hippie bullshit aside, the idea of community is why I got into subculture music in general. The community in punk and hardcore has always been welcoming (your experience may vary) and Give’s music concentrated on what we can do in this moment to recognize and love each other. Does that sound like any other band that you might know from the DC/Maryland area? Do you know any other bands who made a Love Connection at some point?
If it weren’t terribly obvious already, I am talking about Turnstile. They covered “Fuck Me Blind,” a song from Give’s only full-length record, on a 7” in 2016. There are people who still think that this is a Turnstile song, and honestly, I don’t blame them. It doesn’t sound out of step with anything else that band has done. Both bands exude an overwhelming positivity and faith in your fellow man that hearkens back to DC’s very own Fugazi, albeit less cynical than Mackaye. Turnstile released a tape of a live set and a cassette version of their album Nonstop Feeling on Mosher’s Delight, a label that Give’s Scharbach ran. There’s not a single release on Mosher’s Delight that isn’t great, which is rare to say for any label, but it’s so varied in style and form that the consistency in quality is even more powerful.
All of those Mosher’s Delight records push the envelope of hardcore further in one way or another and some of my favorite bands of the last decade, like Fury, Mil-Spec, Big Contest, and Unified Right, all have music on the label. None of these bands really sound like the others, except that they’re all guilty of having sick riffs and 2step parts. Give’s final release, a tape of live songs from their final show called Love In This House, finishes off with a song called “We Want New.” It’s another rallying cry to the community, begging them to create. “It was never mine, always there to define. There’s no feeling like youth in motion.” Do a new thing and make the kids move. Make the kids love.
Love In This House was released in physical form by Advanced Perspective Records, who also challenges the genre in their own way. Bands on Advanced Perspective are a little heavier overall but the ethos is very similar to what took place on Mosher’s Delight. In a way, it feels like a passing of the torch when you look back at what took place there. It’s also Advanced Perspective 0 in their record catalog, as if it came before their first release. I’m writing a bit out of my ass here but it does feel like the baton was passed with this.
On “We Want New,” there’s a line that says, “Soon, I will die, blood for the ride. Don't need my name remembered, but what we help build and leave behind is what means something to me.” This one’s a little more obvious in terms of meaning but it does come full circle with the first verse of “I Am Love”: “I want you to walk across my back to get where you belong. My stomach is burning through to do something good for you.”
It’s been 10 years since Singles Going Confetti dropped, and the mark that Give made on the scene, whether you noticed it or not, is there forever. Check it out if you haven’t heard it and let me know what you think. Here’s to another decade of this record. Godspeed.