Toronto’s Fucked Up are a punk band, or so we’re told. And while their second full-length offering The Chemistry of Common Life owes much to the roots of that fragmented and thin-spread catch-all of a genre, four short letters just can’t go very far toward encapsulating what it really sounds like.
The Chemistry of Common Life gets off to a deceptively mellow start with a meandering hippie flute in isolation, but then “Son The Father” moves into a roaring wah-wah’d crescendo chord before exploding into an old-school punk rock’n'roll riot, a big wall of guitars with shouted vocals swimming around just beneath the surface. There’s a kind psychedelic day-glo feel to it, chaotic and anarchic and melodic all at once… which makes it as good an intro to what’s yet to come from Fucked Up as you could hope for.
Expect the unexpected from The Chemistry of Common Life, basically. “Magic Word” mixes guttural bellowing and garage freak-out action with… bongos? Well, they sound like bongos, or some sort of tablas, maybe. “Golden Seal” throws in a languid pace and morphing trip-out synth pads before the filter-swept guitars return as we glide into “Days of Last”, which goes back to the raucous punk template that seems to be Fucked Up’s starting point… or maybe their omega. Maybe both - like that snake that eats its own tail, you know?
The most shocking thing about The Chemistry of Common Life - despite the confrontational name its creators bear - is how listenable it is. Boiled down to their essence, these songs are rock’n'roll tunes with simple progressions, just amped up and sluiced with effects to draw the focus away from the vocals. They’ve surely got some inscrutable things to say, but the voices are used more as instruments than soapboxes, carefully placed in the soundscape with an ear for the bigger picture.
To be honest, Fucked Up sound a lot more like the original shoegazers than many of the bands currently tagged as such; listen to the intro to “No Epiphany” with its reversed loops of noise, and try to tell me I’m wrong. Like some hallucinogenic carnival, The Chemistry of Common Life envelops you, surrounds you completely, drags you inside to show you its subversive mysteries… whatever they may be. It sounds like the Burning Man festival looks, and probably possesses a similar life-derailing potency.
“Royal Swan” sounds like something Jefferson Airplane might have made had they started up a decade later, and “Twice Born” sounds like revolution recast as a children’s party with jelly, clowns, pipebombs and a big stack of amplifiers. Finally, The Chemistry of Common Life closes on the joyously epic melody of the title track, and you want to run naked through the streets with your fellow defiers of the status quo, hugging policemen before knocking them senseless and painting flowers on McDonalds shopfronts before smashing the glass to smithereens.
Are Fucked Up preaching a revolution, or some new unstructured un-religion based purely on noise and rhythm? Or are they just screwing with our heads, subverting everything - even their own expectations of themselves and their art? It’s hard to tell, but trying to work it out for yourself is irresistible. So drink deep of The Chemistry of Common Life, and see where the trip takes you.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: Fucked Up, noise, prog, psychedelic, punk, rock'n'roll, shoegazer, The Chemistry of Common Life
