Send "Fucked Up " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Avclub |
 Fucked Up’s evolution from blitzkrieg punk band to progressive hardcore champion might seem dramatic, but as evidenced by Couple Tracks: Singles 2002-2009, most of the group’s growing up was done in private. Its sprawling opus, 2008’s The Chemistry Of Modern Life, was preceded by a shrapnel-blast of singles that received little attention at the time. But dismissing the band’s early output as mere baby steps misses the point: Like a primer on the history, potency, and gleeful paradox of punk, Couple Tracks is simultaneously poppy and crusty, regressive and inventive, optimistic and nihilistic. It also flat-out fucking rocks. It’s rife with cuts such as the catchy “Anorak City” and the corrosive “Black Hats,” songs that prove conclusively that singer Damian Abraham is a go-for-broke, louder-than-life frontman on par with Jerry A. of Poison Idea, or John Brannon of Negative Approach. And even the collection’s post-Chemistry tracks—including a ventilated, spaced-out version of “David Comes To Life,” a high point of the group’s 2006 breakthrough, Hidden World—feel more like the fearless experimentation of Big Boys or Crass than they feel like self-indulgence. Granted, Fucked Up’s ambitious full-lengths are always going to snag the most attention. But when it comes to chronicling the group’s heart, recklessness, and rabid devotion to the fine art of the punk anthem, Couple Tracks is the true classic....full text |
| Bbc |
| It’s been a funny old journey for F***** Up, who grunted into life at the turn of the century and quickly became poster boys for the DIY punk rock underground thanks to a stream of excellent 7” records. Alongside fellow Torontonians Career Suicide the band managed to affect a volte-face for the hardcore community, demonstrating an encyclopaedic knowledge of the genre’s embryonic days that took in the likes of Poison Idea, Negative Approach and The Fix and spawned a sea of dreary imitators. Recent times, of course, have seen the band make the curious transition from DIY kingpins to indie rock darlings. They shucked off many early fans with genre-buckling debut album Hidden World and lost a fair few more as they played with jaunty bongo breaks, chirpy flute toots and squelchy synth swells for Polaris Prize-winning follow-up effort The Chemistry of Common Life. Simultaneously, they were making top ten lists in publications whose editors had never before felt the psychotic urge to drop $100 on a copy of the Nubs EP. Whilst the road from hardcore’s inner circle to mainstream popularity is a tricky task, littered with the corpses of past embarrassments (see: Necros, SSD, Junkyard...), F***** Up have somehow managed to maintain a grip on their credibility as they’ve courted the wider world, all while nurturing a fanaticism for the vinyl format. The spoils of this addiction are collected here, meaning if you’ve not had the cash, savvy or record player to warrant tracking down each blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em release you can still play catch-up with this amusingly-annotated collection....full text |
| Nowtoronto |
| Most of the non-punk world discovered Toronto hardcore heroes Fucked Up through their award-winning and game-changing 2008 album The Chemistry Of Common Life. As innovative as Chemistry was, it was the effortless way it folds music-critic-friendly influences into the amped-up punk racket that garnered much of the attention. It was unconventional because of how conventionally pop it sounded without completely ditching its hardcore roots. This career-spanning retrospective helps put Fucked Up’s unlikely critical-darling status in perspective, and serves as a handy catch-up tool for those who’ve come to the party late. Packaged this way, the band’s journey from straight-up hardcore to genre-bending futuristic thrash makes perfect sense. It might not completely shoot down the purists’ sellout complaints, but at the very least it forces them to admit that the shift in sound happened organically over time and wasn’t a calculated attempt at crossover success. ...full text |
Fucked Up lyrics
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