Send "Fucked Up " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Punk rock has had its share of ambitious bands producing ambitious records-- Double Nickels on the Dime, Zen Arcade, Sandinista!, and The Shape of Punk to Come spring to mind-- but few groups in this sphere have pushed the envelope as often as Fucked Up. For the last few years, they've been releasing singles as part of a series based on the Chinese Zodiac, each of which usually runs over the 10-minute mark. For a 2007 charity Christmas single, they managed to get James Murphy, Nelly Furtado, and "Degrassi: the Next Generation"/"90210" actress Shenae Grimes (among many, many others) to appear on the same song; during a 12-hour (!) NYC concert in 2008, they got moshers to smash along to Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig doing Descendents covers. Their reach continues unabated on their new album, David Comes to Life, a 78-minute rock opera.The story of David Comes to Life is fairly complicated and, at points, heavily meta. It concerns a factory worker named David Eliade who falls in love with a woman named Veronica Boisson. They conspire to build a bomb together and death, destruction, and redemption follow; along the way, the story's narrator does battle with David for control of the plot. There's a long tradition of rock concept albums that aren't easy to understand, and this one is no exception; but enjoying it doesn't depend on decoding the tale. The record is divided into four separate acts, with a narrative focus that shifts from scene to scene-- a few songs are told from the overarching narrator's perspective, while David's ex-girlfriend, Vivian Benson, offers her side of the story in the album's back half. While a few guest vocalists are employed to help out-- Cults' Madeline Follin and singer/songwriter Jennifer Castle represent Veronica and Vivian, respectively-- the story is largely told by the band's screaming frontman, Damien Abraham, aka Pink Eyes. Taking into account the album's relatively limited range-- almost an hour and a half of straight-up bashing and riffage, with moments like the jangly acoustic figure that opens "A Slanted Tone" as a rare respite-- it becomes apparent that you will need a few listens and a lyric sheet to apprehend David Comes to Life's ambition and follow its labyrinthine storyline. Or, you could just sit back and let the record's dense, visceral blast of guitar squall wash over you. More than any single Fucked Up record, David Comes to Life is thick with walls of noisy melody. It's hard to get a handle on just how many guitar tracks are on a given song, and Shane Stoneback deserves a medal for mixing the sheer bulk of the sound into something so clear. But for all the shoegazey textures and blistering sonic assault, David Comes to Life is also direct and immediate. Hooks are piled on top of hooks, bursting through torrents of spacey noise ("I Was There") and peppy rhythms ("The Recursive Girl") alike. At points, the primal appeal of the blunt and effective riffing even brings to mind the bar-band rock of the Hold Steady....full text |
| Nme |
| Nothing lasts forever. And while hardcore aficionados will strive for redemption through Fucked Up’s operatic third full-length, they’ll quickly learn that while this offering maintains the group’s bilious urgency, the Torontonian outfit are not the musicians we met back in 2008. Behold their evolution: while 2008’s ‘The Chemistry Of Common Life’ album was drenched in religious connotations and spiritual euphemisms, this time, their rock opera about romance and death at an English lightbulb factory (seriously) is theatrics personified, taking listeners on a quest while still abiding by their precious DIY ethic. Thanks to ‘The Other Shoe’ and ‘The Recursive Girl’, no longer can we throw the usual old adjectives at Fucked Up and declare them just another testimony to punk rock’s penchant for rapture; their diverse, dimensional and multi-layered tale of love lost, found and endured reflects a band defined by tumultuous relations and the evolution of their fanbase. We dare you to hold them back....full text |
| Consequenceofsound |
| In so many ways, Fucked Up is all about theatrics. From the eye-catching, provocative band name and band members’ stage names, to lead singer Damian “Pink Eyes” Abraham’s larger-than-life stage presence, to the dense lyrics and hardcore punk-inspired musical mess, the Toronto seven-piece demands attention and does so with dramatic aplomb. Despite dozens of 7″s, collaborations, singles, and splits, this is only the band’s third official LP, but it takes the drama and amps it up to an insane extreme: David Comes to Life is a four-act narrative album that encompasses a handful of esoteric characters dealing with the troubles and joys of love, all in thunder-charged guitar clangor. Eighteen songs come together here, in total just about 80 minutes of music, composed with just as much lyrical and musical fragility and finesse as there is ham-fisted, aggressive, raw power. From the honking calliope instrumental opening track, “Let Her Rest”, onwards, there’s a sense of playful wonder leaping about. The track builds a gleeful fog of glittering guitars, enveloping the listener as a welcome to the album’s world. And then, just as the fog lifts, a clanging guitar lick opens things back up. The rhythm comes together on “Queen of Hearts”, and the three guitarists charge head first, Pink Eyes exclaiming that “two people will never be the same again.” This remains a constant theme, the negative and positive aspects of love united in the fact that they are utterly important, utterly life-changing. The narrative at the core of the album, if followed through to its intensest specificity, upholds that creed by having David, a depressed office worker, go through the tortures of love and eventually (possibly) kill his beloved. That said, no single song depends necessarily on the past one to carry weight. Perhaps it has to do with Pink Eyes’ furious, enraged animal shout-singing, but more likely it’s just the sheer fact that these are fun, approachable, well-wrought rock songs. So, when I say that the narrative slips out of attention or cohesion (which happens somewhere between regularly and frequently), it doesn’t mean that the album is failing. Instead, the other half (the other equally impressive half) is dominating the record. This is definitely the case on “The Other Shoe”, in which lilting female backing vocals (courtesy of Castlemusic’s Jennifer Castle) and clashing guitars (from Mike “10,000 Marbles” Haliechuk, Josh “Concentration Camp” Zucker, and Ben “Young Governor” Cook) churn out a dance-punk number that survives without any knowledge of concept or themes....full text |
Fucked Up lyrics
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