Fucked Up are the darlings of the blogosphere these days with the release of their new album David Comes To Life. Despite their hard to pronounce in public name, this “punk” rock band hailing from Toronto, Ontario, Canada has been on the rise since winning the 2009 Polaris Music Prize for their second LP The Chemistry Of Common Life. The growling punk lyrics are tinged with political and social commentary, and the guitar heavy music is almost anthemic. Well, David Comes To Life has created an almost punk opera with a few pop hooks to really confuse the senses. Stories are told by front man Damian Abraham’s barking voice for nearly 80 minutes to combine these stories into a much deeper tale. It has a similarity to Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs album, in that it is intended to be played from start to finish so the story can be fulled told. If nothing else, when people ask what you are listening to on your iPod, you can say, “oh, just some Fucked Up song”.
Ok, ok. I’m not even going to try to get into some heavy analysis of this record because almost everyone and their mother has already done it better than I probably could. What I am going to do is tell you that they are playing at Exit/In on Thursday June 30th at 8pm. The show will get started with two other Nashville rockers… the ever exploding JEFF the Brotherhood (who we’ve talked about plenty on this blog, do a search) and Diarrhea Planet. It is sure to be an unforgettable night out (all of them are known for outrageous stage antics).
The Village Voice has a pretty good review of the David Comes To Life album, and you can get a first listen of David Comes To Life over at the NPR website. Pitchfork has a pretty good interview with Fucked Up, and you can see Damian Abraham (hosting for “The Wedge”) interviewing Arcade Fire. David Comes To Life was also named “best new music” by Pitchfork whose always random grading system calculated a meaningless 8.6 rating.
Get out and see some awesome live music.
