The music is often buoyant and sparkling, but with the rough edge of screamed vocals. They emerged from a hardcore punk background, but found some of their greatest success in sprawling, 90 minute long concept albums. Frontman Damien Abraham has a look and voice to inspire fear, but out of the studio he’s an avuncular podcaster who likes nothing more than chatting music with his pals.
Their latest studio album is similarly contradictory - while each member of the band laid down their own parts separately, they may never have sounded more together as a unit. On Another Day, Fucked Up for the most part abandon concepts and narrative in favour of a short, sharp, uncommonly upbeat LP. In lieu of a grand, overarching theme, this is a celebration of creativity, the beauty of art and good energy for the sake of it.
Another Day was recorded in a single 24 hour period (which, yes, is sort of a concept), and that sense of a clock ticking can’t help give it an incredible immediacy. Where earlier releases may have built up slowly or set the table with a punk rock overture of sorts, opener “Face” kicks straight into life. There’s a second or two of feedback and then Fucked Up are going great guns, Jonah Falco in particularly pulverising form on the drums. Without wishing to suggest any kind of intra-band tension, the fact everyone worked in their own space does seem to encourage a sense of freedom in their playing. No one’s telling you to turn down your amp or maybe try it a little more like this; provided everyone’s pushing for the same goal, that lack of inhibition is a great thing.
Somehow, despite the distance, the whole thing fits together like a jigsaw. The spindly, twisting guitar parts of “Stimming” are layered to great polyrhythmic effect over the barrage of drums. The song lurches and swings but somehow keeps together, held in place by the steadying bark of Abraham at the microphone. The bouncy pop-punk of “Follow Fine Feelings” similarly piles up pieces in a maximalist fashion that manages never to overwhelm or detract from the song. It’s a rare Fucked Up song with entirely clean vocals, the sea of voices from lesser heard band members becoming a stirring whole.
Lacking the time to embark on another punk opera, Fucked Up instead produce some of the most stirring and life-affirming music of their career to date. “Divining Gods” is pure driving rock, complete with uncharacteristic guitar heroics, but given the anti-sheen of the band’s blown-out, raw sound. The title track is a little more lyrically oblique, but the somewhat violent verses give way to a boisterous singalong slice of life chorus: “Another day / Wе’re rising and falling / Another day / Trying to get small wins.” Few acts can rabble rouse like they can and the sound remains completely their own, that combination of bluster and bubblegum.
It all culminates in the album’s closer and highlight “House Lights”. Fucked Up stick the landing and then some with a thesis for the record that we can all get on board with: things can be shit sometimes, but that’s life. “It’s got its problems and the world is full of strife / But you fight to find the joy before they bring up the house lights” serves as a gently poetic mantra (Abraham’s growled “At this point, what the fuck are we saving?” a more blunt one) for what the band have to say on Another Day. They’re sensitive to the world’s myriad problems, obstinate enough to kick against them all the same.
Because we’ve seen them pull off such audacious projects, Another Day can seem to an extent like a minor Fucked Up release, relatively speaking, but perhaps it’s the Fucked Up release we need right now. It’s direct, angry, and often joyful – a reminder that making good music well is always worth doing.
