This coming weekend, I'm taking my daughter up to Maryland's Merriweather Post Pavilion for the All Things Go festival. We went to the show a couple of years ago, and we had a great time. Since then, All Things Go has started running companion fests in New York and Toronto, and it's also getting ready to release a new compilation called All Things Go: 10 Years, which benefits Jack Antonoff's charity the Ally Coalition. Bartees Strange, who reps DC, is on this year's All Things Go lineup, and he's also on the charity comp, paying homage to DC post-hardcore greats Smart Went Crazy.
An important thing to know about Smart Went Crazy is that they were fucking awesome. They released a couple of sharp, incisive albums on Dischord in the '90s before breaking up in 1998. Frontman Chad Clark now leads Beauty Pill with a couple of other Smart Went Crazy alums, and other members of the band spent time in Faraquet and the Caribbean. They released their song "DC Will Do That To You" on the 1997 album Con Art, and it's specifically about interrogating the uncomfortable feeling that you might get when people ask you for spare change in DC. It's more vital now than ever, as Donald Trump directs federal authorities to make the lives of poor people in DC that much harder.
Bartees Strange's new song "DCWDTTY" isn't a cover of "DC Will Do That To You." Strange wrote the track, and he co-produced his new version with Jack Antonoff, his collaborator on Horror, the album that he released earlier this year. Strange and Antonoff play most of the instruments on the track, and they really crank its raw catharsis up. In a press release, Strange says:
One of my favorite songs from people in this part of the world is "DC Will Do That To You" by Smart Went Crazy. Content-wise, this song doesn't have much to do with theirs, other than I feel like a big part of who I am is because of DC and what I feel like it did to and for me. This song is just me, wandering through the DMV -- things seen and heard in a uniquely lovely and upside down place.
Below check out Bartees Strange's "DCWDTTY" and Smart Went Crazy's "DC Will Do That To You."
The All Things Go: 10 Years compilation is out 11/7.
