Fucked Up

Thu 11th Dec, 2008 in Features

Hype can envelop a band. It can lead to perceptions being made about music before their sounds have even been heard. It can either make a band…or destroy them.

Toronto experimental noisemakers Fucked Up are the latest group to engender praise from nearly all and sundry. The band’s latest album, The Chemistry of Common Life, has garnered worldwide praise and adulation, with their blend of hardcore punk and more experimental leanings seeing them tagged as the latest, greatest thing.

“I’d like to think that we’re all a bit more modest than assuming our star is rising,” counters drummer Jonah – œGuinea Beat aka Mr. Jo’ Falco. “I think everybody is looking at this in a very active way – when you see the star rise you expect to be able to peek behind the curtain and see one guy with stains on his shirts and blisters on his hands pulling a rope, making a star rise.

“That’s what we’re doing,” he continues. “We’re trying to make sure that things go smoothly at this point while they have the opportunity to be. We’re still working hard, but it’s intensely gratifying and quite flattering all the wonderful things that people have said about the record and about the band. We frankly can barely believe it.”

The Chemistry of Common Life is, to anyone familiar with the band, simply a continuation of what they had done previously. Perhaps it’s that it’s coming out on the venerable Matador label, rather than being independently released by the band. Or, perhaps, it’s that it’s a case of right time, right place. Perhaps, most likely, it has to do with a slow build-up. The band has self-released seven- and twelve-inches since their second album Hidden World came out in 2006 on Jade Tree, leading to a level of awareness of the group that wasn’t there in the past.

“That’s the question – - œwhy this record?’ It’s just that intangible thing, where it must be that one little thing. But the thing about this record,” Jonah explains, “up until this record I think we’ve been generating attention and offering just a taste of things that have pleased people, and both Hidden World and [the EP] Year of the Pig were well-received in certain places, but people didn’t have that thing that they could hold and say, – œAh, now I understand Fucked Up and I understand all those things that people have been talking about.”

The Chemistry of Common Life is different though, Jonah thinks. ”[It’s] a record that was written and conceived within one fell swoop. For us, Hidden World feels disjointed, so The Chemistry of Common Life felt really cohesive in the process of writing it, in the process of recording it, and in the process of hearing it after it’s been released. I think we all agree that it’s singular as a piece of work.”

Putting so much thought and effort into the writing and pre-planning of The Chemistry of Common Life, the recording of it was subsequently a much longer endeavour than Fucked Up were expecting it to be.

“We went into the studio very cocky and assumed we’d get it done and get it out. So we took a passive approach, but it ended up being quite lengthy and quite involved, but because of that it was quite relaxing and quite involved in terms of generating ideas. I had the misfortune of logging the most hours in the studio, other than the engineer. I take personal interest in our recording process, and I also co-wrote some of the songs, so I was absorbing the process of the recording to take to the next one.”

A key element to the sound of The Chemistry of Common Life is how they manage to meld abrasive punk rock sounds with more experimental edges, yet make it sound like there’s an overarching idea behind it all. “It’s a lesson for us in how to write a record now,” Jonah agrees.

It’s certainly something that they envision doing again – instead of taking a different approach, as they traditionally have when it’s come to creating albums. Instead, Fucked Up may very well have found a formula that fits for them. Each of their records has had a certain vibe, or a certain style.

“We started talking about the next record when we were on the last day of our last tour, in Buffalo – anything to stave off the pain of being in Buffalo,” he quips. “Including talking about your band on the last day of a cold American tour!

“I won’t give anything away [about the next album], but it won’t be a purge or one thing or an amplification of another. The best we can do is approach something as a full project and approach it in that scope, so that we work with our nose to the grindstone and then lift your head away and you don’t recognise what you’ve made anymore.”

Fucked Up’s The Chemistry of Common Life is out now.