If Fucked Up have always held one thing dear, it’s the freedom to do what they want. In recent years, the Toronto natives have pushed at the boundaries of what’s expected from a hardcore band, dispensing with the need to keep things brief and expanding their already prog-indebted style into the dangerous world of the concept album.
‘David Comes To Life’, their 2011 record, was a sprawling epic set in England as the late ‘70s became the early ‘80s; a character study that took them further down the rabbit hole discovered on their ambitious sophomore effort, ‘The Chemistry Of Common Life’.
‘Glass Boys’, then, should follow the path sketched out for it, and try to go one better. That it doesn’t is a welcome development. At 10 songs and just over 40 minutes in length, this is as close to an exercise in brevity as we’re likely to get from Fucked Up and it also underlines that the length of a song has no correlation with its ability to express complex ideas.
Abandoning the narrator as a convention, ‘Glass Boys’ finds Fucked Up acknowledging their situation and also the difficulties that accompany being a band from the margins thrust into the snug confines of mainstream indie, families and responsibilities in tow.
They look back, not unkindly, on their past idealism and what music once meant, also addressing the industry that has attempted to co-opt them. As Damian Abraham howls midway through Paper The House: “The way I make my living is driving me insane. A 21st century irony, where everything you hoped for in life fills you with anxiety.”
‘Glass Boys’ is also a product of the band’s conflicted inner sanctum, with Abraham fighting for another feature length effort to be their next move just as Mike Haliechuk pushed to rein things in on this occasion. Behind the gregarious, gravel-throated frontman, Haliechuk’s influence is again writ large across this record, which largely sticks to his initial blueprints. The guitars, meanwhile, form layer upon layer as he, Ben Cook and Josh Zucker impart warm tones and deeply melodic riffs to underpin Abraham’s uncompromising bark.
Beneath that, Jonah Falco’s drums are a technical marvel, with multi-tracked beats - one at full speed, the other half-time - adding a brand new texture at the record’s low end. ‘Glass Boys’ will, in fact, be accompanied by an alternate, half-time LP in its vinyl edition.
Fucked Up’s is a story that’s almost impossible to predict but, even so, ‘Glass Boys’ has its share of surprises: it’s more concise but deeper, less structured but more closely tied to convention. There was no sense in trying to outplay ‘David Comes To Life’ at its own game and this record is the result of a decision based on experience. As Haliechuk told Stereogum late last year: “My balloon is the one that no one wants to go on, but it keeps the other balloon from going out into space.”
Fucked Up Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sun June 15 2014 - MANCHESTER Gorilla
Wed June 18 2014 - LONDON KOKO
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