Fucked Up are Working Class Heroes

Fucked Up are Working Class Heroes

18 August, 2011
by: Domzig

The world's weirdest hardcore band have only gone even more conceptual

I reckon the best show I’ve ever witnessed was Fucked Up’s gig at the Old Blue Last a few Christmases ago. Playing two sets (the other was for the people who couldn’t get in to see the first), the band literally destroyed the place in a flurry of blood, confetti, pillow fights and fake snow. As I stepped over the battered sofa and headed out into the street, I had the feeling that I’d witnessed something truly amazing.

Since then, I’ve seen the Toronto hardcore band at least once a year, and they’ve been radically different every time. I’ve seen them smash up an MTV set, play whole sets comprised of nothing but NOFX and Sex Pistols covers, flirt (briefly) with fascist imagery and write hardcore songs that basically piss on the hardcore rule book. Writing songs about religious fundamentalists and borrowing liberally from shoegaze and krautrock has seen them slightly ostracised by die-hard punks, but then again when has that ever mattered.

Looking back it almost seems inevitable that Fucked Up would end up doing a concept album, and lo and behold their new record ‘David Comes to Life’ is exactly that. The album tells the story of a guy trapped in the fictional English town of Brysdale Spa who finds some escape through his love with a communist rabble-rouser. The kind of record that only bands from North America can make, it’s both a lamentation on the lost cause of working class radicalism and a love letter to the righteous fury of the early British punk scene. It still sounds like a house falling down though.



What made you guys want to set 'David Comes to Life' in the UK?

Jonah:  We’ve always had a bit of momentum in the UK, having been here so many times, and it’s the first times I felt I was in a ‘real band’. Britain has this real weird musical environment, and from the first time we came here we’ve been wrapped up in this whole other energy of being in a band, and the way that word travels over here. We have a real fondness for it.

As the plot developed for the record it made more and more sense to set it in the UK. Part of the story is about the fading of labour and the grassroots left wing movement, which is something we feel has happened in Britain over the past 30 years. It’s part nostalgia and part self-indulgence.

How do you go about writing a concept album?

You just wake up one morning and it’s on your desk done, right?  I think the concept had to come after we’d made the record. No one sets out writing a concept album, you just start writing and a thread sort of naturally develops, and you just end up running with it. I think there’s always been a narrative to Fucked Up; this is just the first time we’ve managed to marry it significantly to an idea or a theme.

I mean, we’ve already exhausted all the other things we could have done; psychedelia ... long songs...the only place we had left to go was full-on rock opera.

I love the fictional British punk band in the album. Was that modelled on anyone in particular?

Well, we’ve all been fascinated with British punk music for a long time, and this is our way of paying a little tribute to all that. We give a lot of weight to this place Brysdale Spa, and it gives the records a bit of depth to the idea of all these things happening to someone living in 70s Britain.

So in a weird way, this is almost an attempt to make a Sham 69 album today?

Haha, yeah. Sham were one of the only punk bands who managed to bring this community-focused aspect to their music that kind of turned their fans into a unit. Obviously we're not really a literal part of that, but this has been a fun way to participate in British punk. We’ve narcissistically inserted ourselves into the UK DIY scene of the mid ‘70s.

Cool.  The only problem is that you’re a hardcore band, right? Why bother writing complicated lyrics when everyone is too busy slam-dancing to hear them?

Well, I don’t know. I mean, when people go fucking crazy at a show, then at least they’re taking something away from the music that’s positive. Obviously, if people are smashing each other into a fine mist, then that’s not cool, but the fact that people don’t get words like ‘perfidy’ isn’t much of a concern when you’re on stage.

I'm sure that Radiohead - not that I’m comparing us to them - wouldn’t care much if someone took their pants off during one of their more complex numbers. It’s not something I worry about when I’m on stage.
 
Yeah, I agree, but I always feel a little bit sorry for people like Ian McKay who must stare at a sea of people beating each other up and think ‘you’re just not getting this?’

I would be lying if we haven’t been there, but if you decide that you hate the audience before you’ve even started then you’re sort of in a downward spiral. It’s cool that people are enthusiastic, and if they want to understand the lyrics, then they can always read the insert afterwards, right?

Fucked Up are playing with OFF! and Cerebral Ballzy at XOYO on the 25th of August.

Domzig