Over a decade and six albums that marked the turn of the last century, Boston's Karate chopped together an aesthetic that combined elements of emo, slowcore and jazz. This versatility made each of their albums thrilling and unpredictable and also charted the progress of singer and guitarist Geoff Farina's instrumental approach, becoming more adventurous with each passing year. An issue with Farina's hearing forced the band to fold in 2005, though he continued to ply his trade in a few other outfits where tooth-rattling volume wasn't a key component. Last year, Numero Group, a label versed in the excavation and curation of pre-millennial indie curiosities, assembled a box set of Karate's works, sparking the fuse for this reunion.
Whenever a beloved band returns after a long absence it's fair to say that fan expectations are especially difficult to satisfy. The first hope is that the band will still sound more or less exactly as they did in their prime. The other, more reasonable, hope is that the players will bring together all the skills and experiences they've accrued in the interim and create a new sound that touches on the old but has an of-the-moment vitality. Unfortunately, Make It Fit falls short of ticking either of these boxes.
The first half of the album is presented with the clean and stripped down grain of early Karate songs, but the feel is less their trademark over-caffeinated tension and more suburban dad that used to be in punk bands jamming to Thin Lizzy songs with his buddies in the car port. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's not very remarkable either. Eventually "Fall to Grace" shows a more gilded and serpentine guitar sound that reaches into the harder-to-scratch corners of the song. Likewise "Around the Dial" is a mid-tempo dub-inflected burner that houses a few compact guitar solos between the verses.
The chemistry between the players clearly remains, especially with drummer Gavin McCarthy, whose taste and prowess shines through the dimmest moments on the album. The majority of the songs seem more aligned with the output of Exit Verse, Farina's mid '10s band whose albums were constructed on a '70s riff rock foundation; "Three Dollar Bill" reeks of roadhouse draught and ragged cut-off jeans. Yet Farina and company clearly understand their legacy, ending with "Silence, Sound," a song that edges quietly toward an explosive finish line. This is a reunion and album that disappoints not because it doesn't give us what we want or expect, but because it periodically hints that that thing is still somewhere in there, among the Bob Seger pronouncements and Sirius Satellite anthems.