And My Album of the Year Is…..
Fucked Up - David Comes to Life
The third album from the Toronto punk band was, actually by far and away, my favourite album of 2011. The nearly 80 minute rock opera is as bold as it is brilliant. Fucked Up have been able to channel their classic early hardcore sounds into an expansive masterpiece without losing the genre’s characteristic raw energy or sense of purpose.
Beginning with ‘Let Her Rest’, we are greeted with a theme that became evident in Fucked Up’s last record, The Chemistry of Common Life, that being the groups ability to put together a complex, multi-layered instrumental track. After 3 and half minutes of guitar noodling, it cuts out. A single guitar riff emerges. We have entered ‘Queen of Hearts’. The drums joins in, the guitars erupt and Damian Abraham lets loose with the album’s first lyric; “The sun rises above the factories, rays don’t make it to the street’. Boom! The album has begun and their is no looking back.
‘Queen of Hearts’ is an unashamed love song. It introduces us to the basic story of the album. David Eliade, an alienated factory worker in Thatcher’s Britain, meets and falls in love with a socialist activist, Veronica Boisson (voiced in the song by Madeline Follin of Cults fame). Veronica ignites in David a sense of purpose, a wanting for something more, a theme that drives the remainder of the album.
Following ‘Queen of Hearts’ is a string of near perfect songs. We follow the couple’s love in ‘Under The Nose’, David’s sense of failure in ‘The Other Shoe’ and his depression in ‘Turn The Season’. These songs are quite different to what Fucked Up have produced in the past. The trademarks are still there; Abraham’s gruffed bellow, female guest vocals and harmonies, the seemingly dozens of guitar tracks. Yet the songs are generally simple. The band that has concerned much of its career jamming out extended intros, outros and everything in the middle, are now content with pumping out solid, relatively straight foward punk songs with a classic rock feel.
‘Turn the Season’ also represents a seismic shift in the album’s narrative. At the end of the song, Veronica is killed off in what we later discover was a blast from a bomb the two planted, presumably in David’s factory. From this point on, the album is substantially altered, both thematically and instrumentally. We see a return to a more classic Fucked Up sound; the songs remain short but there are more whirl wind guitars and extended jams. Abraham’s vocal is notably more visceral from this point on; much of the melody of the earlier tracks abandoned for a near uncontrollable bark.
The middle section of the album contains the bulk of the narrative. David curses his past relationship in tracks like ‘Remember My Name’ and ‘A Little Death’. We are also introduced to some new characters - Vivian, a former partner of David’s, and Octavius, the narrator-cum-villian. The album jars back and forth, as Octavius holds David responsible for the death of Veronica. Over the course of ‘I Was There’ and ‘Inside a Frame’ we learn that it is Octavius, as the teller of the tale, that is ultimately responsible for Veronica’s death. The characters by this point have accepted their roles in the story. It’s all very meta.
The album closes with the focus once again on David. The desolate anger that characterises so much of the album evaporates into a catharsis. ‘One More Night’, with its pummeling guitars and constantly shifting dynamics is the highlight of the album. Abraham is at the peak of his powers as he describes David coming to peace with his role and the course of events. We see the re-emergence of Veronica, played this time by Canadian songwriter Jennifer Castle (as if to imply a phoenix-like rise), who declares her everlasting love for David. The verified explosion of emotion that follows is a life affirming moment, as David begs for one more night with his beloved over the top of a driving beat, a signature three piece guitar wall, Castle’s angelic harmonies and an ever increasing haunting organ sound. Closing with the ‘Lights Go Out’, we meet an aging David who is content to relive the story in order to reunite with Veronica. With the instrumentation fading in the final minutes we are reunited with the guitar work that opens the album in ‘Let Her Rest’, confirming that David and Veronica will be together again, and inducing an “aww” or two in the process.
The massive meta-narrative of David Comes To Life is the record definitive component, however it is not necessarily what makes it a great album. Fucked Up had completed the music prior to writing the story. As a result the individual songs on the record stand up by themselves. The pressure to fit the songs to the story, often the major failing of a concept album, is largely absent from the record. As a result, it is easy to relate to individual songs in isolation from the wider story. So when Abraham cries “let’s be together until the stars go out” or “never been as happy as I am today, then the seasons turned and the darkness came” or “maybe it was my fault and I deserve to be upset, maybe the price of being wrong is a lifetime of regret. So tear up my memories into a thousand little parts and give them to someone else so that they won’t tear up my heart” or “I’d go through it again. I would embrace the pain if it gave me the chance of one more glance of you in arms to hold in my dreams” - you don’t need to be trapped in a story without free will where a jealous narrator killed your girlfriend. You just have to be an ordinary human being, with oridinary emotions and ordinary experiences of love, lost, despair, hatred, more despair and hatred, and finally redemption.
Ultimately, it is Fucked Up’s raw ability and talent that shines through. Punk rock has long rebelled, nay, was founded against much of what is contained in this album. The Clash told us that “Beatles-mania had beaten the dust”. Bad Brains taught us we lived in a world where we had to “pay to cum”. Gang Of Four warned us that “love will get you like a case anthrax”, whilst deploring the idea that what happens between people should be “shrouded in mystery”. Yet David Comes To Life is as much a celebration of eternal, omnipresent love as is any Disney movie or bubble gum pop song. The self-celebrating circle jerk of 70’s concept albums helped spark punk rocks drive to make simple music, and whilst bands from The Descendents to Husker Du and yes, Green Day, have all made albums with clear plot lines, none can claim to have one as complex as David Come To Life.
Fucked Up have produced an album that is determined to defy the mediocrity that has defined punk releases for the last decade. Pop punk has been successfully bastardised and turned into a product for mass consumption. Hardcore seems to be content with throwing down in a circle pit of cliches and ever increasing machismo. The noisier and experimental forms of the genre, once a shining beacon of hope, seem to be trapped up their own arses. David Comes To Life is something new, testing the boundaries of the genre from every angle while maintaining its sincerity and authenticity. It is a snapshot of a band at the top of their game, at the top of the game. It is beautiful, it is ugly, and it is my favourite album of 2011.
