Fucked Up
Dose Your Dreams

“I don’t wanna live in this fucking world for one minute more
So I’m gonna go to the corner store and buy another one” [Fucked Up]

The band, a sextet complete with three guitars formed in 2001, hails from the vast Canadian landscapes. Toronto and its surroundings, to be precise. I love Canada, its immense and untouched nature; the millions of hectares of uninhabited forests. There is a place here in Upper Piedmont that has been described as a "Little Canada": marvelous alpine basins in the Alpe Veglia and Devero Natural Park, covered with extensive forests of conifers and beeches. Places I have frequented assiduously forever, unlike Fucked Up. "Dose Your Dreams" (Merge, 2018) is their sixth work.

The guitars have the spasmodic vehemence of hardcore. The numerous guest vocalists overlap; female voices infuse sweetness amidst so much primitive art of living. The drums are explosive, the bass solid; brass, keyboards, and strings expand the palette. After all, “Punk is whatever we made it to be,” a minutemantric memory, consequently we find indie electronic inserts, psychedelic short-circuits, and episodically dull dance formalism. Surf choruses culminate in the most improbable hypnagogic spiritual. We are in art-hardcore between baroque styles and brute energy; if their original source of inspiration was Black Flag and MDC, then, they have known how to incorporate genres and extend their horizons immeasurably.

Listening to the songs is not easy, 18 in total, for a total of 82 minutes and 9 seconds! Take "Accelerate": it is a digital atomization of Big Black with Damian's damned screams revitalizing the madness of the earliest Snapcase [another reference with the so-called “contre-fucking” (“What the fuck, DeMa, even swear words?”)]. The three guitars build a disproportionate wall; a repeated, obsessive sound, at times "detached" as per helmettian tradition (eternal praise and honor to Page Hamilton!), but also dirty, noise, and incisive like in the best Dinosaur Jr..
Also listen to “Raise Your Voice Joyce” and “Normal People” or the tribute to Husker Du, "The One I Want Will Come For Me". Everywhere, you will notice, the strong, squared jaw of a Brünn-Predmost Scandinavian cromagnoid (that is, hybridized with Neanderthal) storms, who shouts with the force of both and calls himself Pink Eyes. He is exactly the singer you should not invite to a barbecue. Also avoid the bassist Mustard Gas!

Among the numerous guests, strictly camped in a Canadian tent (but from "Little Canada"), we highlight Mary Margaret O'Hara, J. Mascis, and folk singer-songwriter Jennifer Castle.

The album curiously reprises the narrative plot of the 2011 concept. It tells of a certain David Eliade who, just laid off, meets a preacher/politician named Joyce Tops who initiates him into some sort of initiatory path. In the end, freed from the oppression “of the mediocre” and from the slavery fueled by the power “of greed, reification, consumerism, and social media”, David can dream again and realize his dreams by combining utopia and realism. And “Joy stops time”.

The sound is elastic, accelerated, incendiary. You (almost) never stop running in this double album. There is the zeal of ancient mammals capable of mating on the run. There is the heroism of the dashing Pogoman launching himself onto the crowd! And everything seems to project towards a great catharsis. Unfortunately, the production is somewhat sugarcoating. If it had been put in Albini's hands, we would shout, like Lazarus, at the miracle!

Raise Your Voice.