Fucked Up - David Comes To Life

We need a thread to discuss this great album, a concept album in 2011 that doesn't absolutely suck. I've been a big fan of this band for years, but this just may wind up being the best thing they've ever done. Especially when you tie in all of the singles, B-sides, and even that crazy fake compilation album they put together for the fictional town and era in the album.

I'm only one listen through so far, but this is honestly a strong contender for album of the year already.

do they have a singer now?

Okay, you'll probably still hate them then.

i keed...

anticipatin! like hidden world and the chemistry of common life well enough, LOVE stray tracks here and there: "generation", "year of the pig" (plus other years), "dangerous fumes", "two snakes". they remind me of les thugs for some reason. pink eyes is sort of an obstacle tho...

I loved Chemistry of Common Life so much and wasn't sure just how they'd be able to expand their sound even further and, tbh, I got a little nervous and imagined flashes of Green Day when I heard "70s style concept album", but I really think this works extremely well and I love just how much time and attention to detail they've put into the whole thing - even if I'm not sure just yet how well actually works to tell a story. I'll need a few more listens for that, but even if it fails on that level, I still find it and extremely replayable album and something I'll be spending a lot of time with this summer.

they remind me of les thugs for some reason

Comparison makes sense now you mention it.

Band has too many singles and too many compilations of those singles with cross-sections of the same tracks on it seems?

Yeah, their discography is kind of a mess. So far I've stuck with the three albums proper, the Couple Tracks compilation, and all the singles in the Zodiac series.

whiney told me to check this out on a http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=81488 tip & i kinda forgot about it + dude's voice has always scared me off but "queen of hearts" is amazing

i hope this is this year's 'the monitor'

Yeah "Queen of Hearts" is so great. I had to replay that one a couple times before I finished the whole thing.

fuck, this sounds great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhgOt7YFN0I

o shit, it does sound like titus a! in good and bad ways, but generally an improvement upon. fukken epic. love the girl vox.

is there a meaning to every song title on the album being three words

the fuck. if the rest of the album is anywhere near that good, i will love it in inappropriate places.

fuuuuck i'm such a sucker for this shit

"the other shoe"

ACT ONE: Love, then tragedy strikes the town.
ACT TWO: David loses Veronica, and then himself, as he succumbs to guilt and despair.
ACT THREE: Another character is revealed, putting the responsibility for Veronica's death into question.
ACT FOUR: A revelation from Vivian sheds more light on Veronica's death; Octavio and Vivian explain their motives, and David is reborn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF6NTvJJYs8&NR=1

^ a good deal less pop than QoH, but equally anthemic. instrumental section = O_O

is there a meaning to every song title on the album being three words

wondered that. odd that "i love you" isn't among them.

Been listening to this album all weekend. F'ckn love it.

why PG Harpy?

Another board user said his young kid is taken with PJ Harvey and calls her PG Harpy, I had an actual LOL moment and the moment was sealed...

ope, goddit

plus lol

promo helpfulness

you know, we're just, like, regular people, we're not, like, punks, like, we're not trying to fuck with people anymore, like, we did do that, you know, when we were younger, but now we just wanna make, like, interesting music that people like

h8 that attitude

Crooked Head is still my four-year-old's favorite song in the world. Really excited to hear this new one...

you know, i'm just, like, a regular person, not, like, a gangsta rapper, like, we're not trying to fuck with people anymore, like, we did do that, you know, when we were younger, but now i just wanna make, like, comedies that an entire family can enjoy together

-ice cube

"A Little Death" and "The Other Shoe" are both great, but 75 mins of Fucked Up = no thanks.

<3 the guitar as "strings" when the album opens (a confession of more than one kind)

http://buytheserecords.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Fucked-Up-David-Comes-To-Life.jpg

album cover suggests that the three-word concept really is "i love you"

"queen of hearts" hitting me way harder the 2nd time through, song of the year shit

well, or song of memorial day, anyway...

this fucking rules fyi

did anybody get the fake comp?

pumped for this

Album of the year. So far, anyway, but it's hard to imagine a better, more genuinely affecting piece of work top this one in the next six or seven months.

I did yeah, it's not bad, not going to shine a light on anything wrt the band but there are some neat songs so hey

I was listening to this album then I saw that this thread had been started

I still got big clown love for 'Hidden World' so I obv have no problem w/ 75 minutes of this band, moreover Damian has one of the consistently best punk rock voices of the last 10 years for my money

'Serve Me Right' and 'Ship of Fools' are standout-ly huge tracks on this for me so far - probably 80% or more of my favourite songs by this band are their punk bangers

first line was an xp to Hoos

enjoying this a lot, but it does get to be a bit much. like, i'm halfway through, and all the textural variation in the world can't balance out damian mixed high on every track & every track a springboard for pummeling uplift. i mean, i get how he's the band's focal point, and you can't really do ham by half measures, but it's still a trap. it starts to get oppressive after a while, even when the songs are there. and the songs are definitely there. fucking "life in paper"!

all the textural variation in the world can't balance out damian mixed high on every track & every track a springboard for pummeling uplift.

a complaint by no means unique to this album. or this band, ffs. hardcore is tricky.

SINKING ON A SHIP OF FOOLS!
SINKING ON A SHIP OF FOOLS!

theres a reason hardcore punk albums are short

& that reason is they give ppl headaches

This is why I only every cherrypick 3-4 songs per record rather than sit through the whole bloody thing.

also for a record that leans so heavily on concept/lyrics, they're...not very interesting.

I'm by no means a punk fan, and I don't like watching Fucked Up live but I do think he's got something vocally that gives him more grain than mere bellowing. And even so it's balanced out here by the Mustard Gas Primitives/Adult Net bits.

Just realised that I've had the "dying on the inside" bit like a locked loop inside my head for days.

yeah 'some tracks' is still my favorite thing they've done and i felt like damon was way too high in the mix for me to enjoy most of 'chemistry,' that opening scream hurts my ears

could use a few instrumental interludes or narrative asides to break things up. ballads maybe. like a concept album, you know? take your broken wings and learn to fly.

wings lungs

guitar playing is so fucking badass though, all the way through. drumming too.

fly sing

love at least half of this. the opening instrumental is as gorgeous as "opening instrumental on a hardcore rock opera" is unpromising.

I say this on every Fucked Up thread
But "Epics In Minutes", guys. "Epics In Minutes". Do not pass Go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXOqWfSfAus

I don't know how these guys can wake up in the morning and feel that they can possible improve upon their impossibly wide and consistently terrific back catalog
It must be tough

i guess i have to listen to this

this is gonna be the best summer ever

i really like how on the top level all these songs are the same. like there are no vocal melodies. it's like six notes looped for 77 minutes with all this stuff happening underneath it.

except here and there. like "hello my name is david" suddenly cutting through everything.

Only seventy-seven minutes, eh?

25% more music than the gaga album for the same price, alfred. if not for fucking amazon.

See, I never want "more" music.

you should pretend this is about david foster wallace

!

This is good.

this is so my album of the year so far not that i really hear all that many albums

I've never liked Fucked Up, but "Queen of Hearts" is phenomenal. Gonna try to hear the whole thing asap.

Okay, it starts to all blur together in a distorted and screamy sameyness by the midway point, so I don't know if it's AOTY material...but I do think "Queen of Hearts" is pretty rad.

(note: I had the same impression of the Gaga album my first time through, so who knows.)

^ basically what i came away with, given the same (awesome) entry point

Concept reminds me a little bit of Alasdair Gray's Lanark.

"A Little Death" and "The Other Shoe" are both the little bits I've heard from this band are great, but 75 mins of Fucked Up = no thanks.

Okay this David's Town thing is really pretty fun.

Especially the one that sounds like Fleetwood Mac and the one with Carl Newman providing vocals.

Someone needs to make me a Fucked Up P0X. They're a band I root for and want to like more, but, as stated upthread, their discography is impenetrable. I have something called Year Of The Pig, and recall favorably reviewing their first album many years ago, and I have various other things here and there on my computer. Haven't disliked anything.

Is it ethically wrong to listen to this album on shuffle? Or should I be listening to each suite at a time in order for it to make sense?

(semi seriosu about this question)

unless you're carefully following the lyrics, the story is imperceptible, and it's not like there's an important musical structure to the album as a whole (???), so i'd say go ahead and shuffle

Yeah, I'd say enjoy it however you want. The story really only comes through if you are sitting with the lyrics book in hand, so I'd say just enjoy them in whatever order you want.

After listening to all of the David's Town thing, I'm pretty sure no one in Britain in the late 70s was saying "O!M!G!".

shuffle it. I have. Dunno why it needs a concept holding it together. Not sure it's really going to improve its worth seeing as its what I've been hoping they'd do for ages.

the first two tracks are great openers but after that yeah do what you feel. i haven't parsed any of the story at all.

Initially disappointed that there's no Crooked Head here, and definitely not an album to listen to on headphones (ear fatigue!) but it's growing on me. After a bunch of listens, Ship of Fools definitely reminding me a lot of shoutier Archers of Loaf, and "Nostalgia" in particular, probably coincidence.

p. clearly album of the year material for me

huh never heard these dudes, i guess now is the time

oy, this is awesome

huh i was wondering how long it would take for god to come into it

Pink Eye: We talk about God more on this record than a Christian band.

Are you religious?

Pink Eye: Not at all. Not. At. All.
10,000 Marbles: We ran out of metaphors.
Pink Eye: We exhausted all those metaphors about moshing and friends and the pit. So now we were like, "God, what’s left?”
Concentration Camp: God!

(2006.)

yeah the majority of the imagery and use of metaphor that Damian is kicking around on here is pretty much the same as what was on Hidden World and probably some stuff before that

on 'chemistry' the majority of the lyrics are by 10,000 marbles, whose real name i do not know; i do not know, also, if this is the case for their other records

they've had the metaphysical bent since hidden world at least

10,000 Marbles = Mike Haliechuk (sp.)

just started listening to this

'queen of hearts' is almost a little tailor-made for ~interests~

my interests

haahaha

i never disliked these guys - but i really am not enjoying "The Other Shoe".

I swear that the track "A Slanted Tone" is the hidden track on Husker's Zen Arcade. And it is a gem.

this is one of those recs where my favorite song is gonna change like 10 times. right now it's "running on nothing" for the 12-string guitar and the fact that it's straight up arena rock.

That's exactly what's happening for me. I still can't make it through the whole thing start to finish, but am also having trouble paying attention to any other albums (which all seem kind of pasty in comparison...)

one of the major moments for me the last few times i've played this has been the outro on "remember my name" followed by the twenty-five or so seconds of acoustic respite before getting back into things

holy wow at this album.

Loving the "David's Town" compilation.

I just got my copy of David's Town (prices on eBay seem to have dropped pretty quickly) and was mildly disappointed that the packaging didn't go a little farther with the idea. Like I really wanted to be completely convinced that it was an artifact. And an insert would have been nice. Like maybe a fake "join our mailing list" for some non-existant label, etc. So much for that cheap thrill.

At the moment it's reminding me of any number of 90's indie comps that I don't remember anymore (not that there was anything wrong with them). And that's really not putting it down. You can kind of see how the need to contend w/Pink Eyes' voice is what brings out the best of this band, though, and it makes me wonder how future stuff without him might fare...

...words of doomy portent

"F-word Up" love u Greg Kot

This is still so great.

hahaha kot

saw them perform this whole album live, last night @ LPR. having never heard it before that, i bought it on vinyl after the show and... it's not quite as amazing as it was live.

Um, give it another day....

you're probably right. i think my ears are still a bit fucked.

i's better in small doses

that queen of hearts song

srsly

tt just put Year Of The Snake on. my response: "if this had been the Ride comeback everyone would have been 'oh cool!'"

that queen of hearts song

― Treeship, Tuesday, November 1, 2016 9:21 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup!

1.5 listens through “Dose Your Dreams” and I think it’s pretty great in that they went even more out-there-Fucked-Up. This made me want to hear their next album be like Killing Joke but fronted by Damian.