The primary time I listened to For In opposition to, it was a monitor from their bracing sophomore album December (1988). My preliminary impression was that I used to be listening to one thing akin to the Chameleons, particularly their earliest releases, however with Mark Burgess’ muscular vocals swapped out for one thing equally impassioned but additionally brittle, like a lethal critical model of legendary producer and Let’s Lively frontman Mitch Easter. 

It took some time for this uneasy sonic marriage to win me over, however I by no means forgot how December immediately disrupted my musical bearings. Who have been this intriguing band that appeared to have teleported from the post-punk proving grounds of Manchester to the flatlands of Nebraska? What was of their document assortment? The perpetual underground music query: Why hadn’t they “made it”? 

The usual For In opposition to narrative depends on well-worn (however correct, on this case) phrases like “criminally underrated”, however nobody has captured their specific genius like Jack Rabid, longtime writer of the indie music journal The Large Takeover. Rightly situating them in relation to British forerunners and contemporaries from Pleasure Division to the Sound (maybe the quintessential “criminally underrated” post-punk band), Rabid and others have finished their finest to match For In opposition to’s relative anonymity with a wealthy physique of detailed, typically reverent criticism. His evaluate of most of their catalogue over at Trouser Press is value studying in its entirety. 

Through the lengthy months of pandemic isolation in 2020-2021, I returned to For In opposition to and immersed myself of their music with a brand new urgency. One thing about their combination of jagged edges and melancholic resignation, all the time teetering on the sting of both flying aside or quietly succumbing to the burden of historical past (private historical past, within the case of Jeffrey Runnings’ lyrics), spoke to me on days once I typically felt like I used to be swimming by oatmeal. 

Nowhere is that this more true than on Coalesced, For In opposition to’s outstanding 2002 document, whose cowl contains a photograph of a shimmering wheat subject on prime of a easy however putting Cerulean blue background. After having Coalesced on repeat for weeks, I noticed I had no alternative however to put in writing a love letter to it. (Amidst sharpening up this text, I additionally received phrase that Runnings is now in hospice following a Stage 4 most cancers analysis.)

What is instantly evident with Coalesced is the growth of For In opposition to’s sound, which makes use of acquainted colours to color one thing a lot bigger, far more formidable. Think about, say, Goya taking one among his early portraits, then stretching the canvas and reorienting the picture in order that the topic of the portrait is now flying excessive above the bottom, concurrently misplaced at midnight, mundane body of the unique session but additionally beginning to really feel liberated from it. Like a lot of their For In opposition to’s mid-career albums, it represents an estuary second finest appreciated on reflection. The sound continues to be claustrophobic in ways in which have all the time existed since 1987’s Echelons, but it is usually exhilarating and filled with risk. 

The opener, “Remedy”, establishes Coalesced‘s “dazzling” (to make use of Rabid’s phrase) musical components: a down- or mid-tempo A piece (on this case launched by a easy minor-chord strum that recollects Johnny Marr) to accompany the singer’s self-doubt… after which all of a sudden, as if a digicam shutter has simply clicked, we’re right into a double-time B part that indicators the arrival of Runnings’ most direct and hopeful reflections. The second time round, because the latter part spins outward into one of many document’s many prolonged, arpeggiated codas, he’s starting to let himself imagine: “Remedy is available in other ways / And I believe that we may discover a place / I want somebody to show to me / This planet nonetheless revolves.” 

“So Lengthy” is an affecting portrait of inside turmoil as seen within the singer’s uneasy rear-view mirror (is it actually all previously?). The music follows an identical script. As Runnings bares his soul (“hoping to be secure from what you’ve all the time identified for therefore lengthy”), For In opposition to tightly comply with their oscillating journey by chapters marked by the addition of martial drum rolls and new layers of ringing guitars. 

The next two tracks kind the big coronary heart of Coalesced, bravely extending the boundaries of the strategy of “Remedy” and “So Lengthy” in a manner that may sound pressured or exaggerated within the fingers of a lesser band. “Gasoline” presents Runnings’ psyche by a type of musical corridor of mirrors, beginning with a simple really feel harking back to Large Star (however with out the twang).

Nothing is because it appears, nevertheless. Because the second verse involves an in depth, the metaphorical shutter clicks as soon as once more, and we speed up into an agitated double-time part over which the singer repeats, “Intangible issues don’t imply that a lot – isn’t that unhappy?” Not content material to go away it there, For In opposition to activate a dime and spin out a surprising coda crammed with stunning transitions.  

Following “Gasoline”, the title monitor opens and slowly chugs alongside its minor-key journey, fortunately resigned to its personal repetition, and we’re in sonic territory that wouldn’t sound misplaced on an early Treatment album. However there may be an earnestness to Runnings’ opening line (“I wander into badly-lit conditions / I get stung / I don’t know why”) that Robert Smith wouldn’t totally acknowledge from beneath his carefully-cultivated picture of the gloomy godfather who additionally wrote “Simply Like Heaven”. It’s a love music. Not an ethereal, playful music like Smith’s “Near Me” or “The Lovecats” nor an over-produced epic dreaming of alt-rock arenas like “Photos of You”, however a bravely realized expression of one thing extra grounded, extra contingent, and extra actual. 

Because the fragility of the verse provides strategy to the triumphant, hovering refrain, Runnings declares, “Via time and take a look at, we’ve coalesced / There’s nothing we are able to’t do!” Persevering with with the sudden transitions of the album’s earlier tracks, the second refrain is adopted by a completely breathtaking instrumental bridge that offers me chills each time I hear it. It’s one other refrain that soars much more than the final for having inhaled the vitality of the bridge. Lastly, the inevitable coda, this time prolonged considerably within the type of a driving instrumental passage that Rabid vividly describes as “a plaintive, repeated guitar determine and matter-of-fact cymbal stops and crashes saying as a lot as any lyrics ever may”.

Every of the ultimate three tracks gives its evocative charms, and after the just about overwhelming catharsis of the title monitor, there’s no relaxation for the weary. “Outdoors a Coronary heart” opens with a jagged, swirling vitality and doesn’t let up for a second, taking us again to the very best moments of December. “Shelf Life” builds from its sadcore verses to a thundering outro, channeling Pink Home Painters at their most sprawling (suppose the second half of “Moments”, from 1995’s Ocean Seaside). Mercifully, the instrumental “Love You” ushers the listener to the end line with a hypnotic set of interwoven guitars that refresh the air like a long-lost Smiths monitor.

Via all of it, because the music alternately hovers and races like a storm that gathers drive whereas rolling over the ocean, we’re nonetheless one way or the other confined inside the singer’s inside monologue. Right here, it’s useful to return to the post-punk canon and emphasize that whereas the factors of comparability are obvious, there are additionally sharp factors of divergence.

It’s Adrian Borland’s bare vulnerability, however with out the bravado of the Sound’s “Successful” or the sheer pleasure of realizing a brand new day has arrived in Borland’s “Brittle Heaven”. It’s Burgess’ patented “lone particular person who’s dropping his moorings in an insane world” persona, however with out the fist-shaking, sing-along choruses to affirm that we’re struggling collectively in our isolation. 

Runnings constantly operates in a not-quite-there world of emotional torment, like a person locked in a cell that’s generally a sunroom, appreciating the heat however understanding that it’s going to finally burn him. Together with his songs, you’re challenged to think about the intoxicating risk that you simply, and nobody else, share with him the excellence of being locked in that individual room. Coalesced gives the potential of accepting that actuality with grace, understanding that it’s of your individual making.

“Be sure to discover a large enough place to cover,” Runnings sings close to the start of “Gasoline”, sounding greater than a bit like Matthew Candy (one other seasoned Nebraskan alt-rocker who, in a devastating coincidence, is dealing with his personal medical struggles) earlier than the music spits out its bubblegum and finds its post-punk footing.

Coalesced is For In opposition to’s masterpiece. Its present is to create sonic areas which might be undeniably cinematic but designed to perform as containers for essentially the most insular expressions of self-doubt, remorse, and victory (nevertheless fleeting). As soon as you’re inside, there isn’t any escaping. It could have been launched in 2002, however for me, it waited 18 years to change into the indispensable quarantine album.