The Make-Up
Yeah, we have seen it all before–the white-boy soul dressed out with just enough distortion to make it seem relevant, the James Brown tiptoe posturing, the organ pumping, the pegged black pants, and yes, even the gravity-defying do Svenonious is sporting up there onstage. But we like it, and we like Svenonious–one of a handful of visionaries, along with Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna and Outpunk fanzine’s Matt Wobensmith, to make a real musical and philosophical mark on punk rock in the 90s.
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Svenonious’s first band, Nation of Ulysses, emerged at the start of the decade into a scene that was caught up in tough-guy hardcore posturing and a dry political discourse that had grown outright stale over the last decade. It seemed to come out of nowhere–even in the context of the relatively progressive underground in Washington, D.C., at the time. Most bands toss off a few seven-inches before really finding their sound, cementing their ideology. But Svenonious went right for the jugular from Nation of Ulysses’s first release. Not content just to put out a record, he had to create what one of the song titles dubbed “The Sound of Young America.” “I’m an atom bomb,” he sang, and the music–a strangely ordered cacophony of guitar feedback, driving drums, and an apocalyptic trumpet bleating in the distance–hit like one.
From the liner notes of their sole release, the “Join Our Club” seven-inch (whose cover depicted the suicides of all four band members): “[Svenonious] claimed ‘Dig a grave big enough to dump the wretched legacy of a life squandered on the idiotic principles of the living world and climb into the car club coffin.’ Svenonious advocated young, romantic suicide marketed as a sort of new teen craze, for the purpose of ’empowerment’ and claimed his ‘car club ephemeral…eternally.’ We start from the finish line. Young Gravediggers, ‘join our club.’” It was classic Svenonious, letting us share but never quite understand the joke. And with that, the Nation folded its flag forever.
Both Nation of Ulysses and the Make-Up are about identity, but if Nation used irony to depants superserious 80s punk, the Make-Up, as the name implies, layers it on for a much less noble reason. For a final number, the band chooses the tune “Make-Up Is Lies,” in which Svenonious sings, “Make-up is another word for disguise”–and the performance as a whole couldn’t have driven the point home harder. Of course the Make-Up is a lie: we wouldn’t expect less from Svenonious. But where the lies of Nation of Ulysses gave new hope to a dying scene, the Make-Up offers only escape.
