Monthly Archives: June 2011

Album Review: Fucked Up

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Fucked Up ‘David Comes To Life’ (Matador)

The band with one of the (potentially) most offensive monockers in musical history return! Once you’ve got past the name (if you didn’t hear their excellent 2008 album Chemistry of Common Life, tut tut), you are really in for a treat.

The Canadian hardcore punk band still cling to the DiY ethics that they started out with. But the situation has moved on. This is a concept album; a rock opera set in a Fictional British town during the dark days of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Not many hardcore punk bands from anywhere tend to do that. I have no idea if this album will ever play as a west-end musical (I hope not). Ever. But I do know that this makes for a very impressive listen.

It’s divided into four acts as a lad called David meets a girl called Veronica, they fall in love and then she dies. David grieves and nearly loses his mind, believeing himself to be responsible.It becomes clear that it wasn’t his fault as other characters come forward to show the part they played…Stand out tracks on this album include ‘Queen Of Hearts,’ ‘The Other Shoe’, ‘Running On Nothing’ and ‘Ship Of Fools.’

If anyone still believes in 2011 that punk is one-dimensional then this album should silence them once and for all. A brave and very exciting album.

****

David Comes To Life is out now on Matador.

Fucked Up ‘Queen Of Hearts.’ mp3

Fucked Up ‘The Other Shoe.’ mp3

F….d Up ‘Ship Of Fools.’ mp3

F….d Up ‘A Little Death.’ mp3

The official website is here

Gig review – Yo La Tengo

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Yo La Tengo – Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, June 6

This is the first night in the UK of Yo La Tengo’s Re-inventing The Wheel tour. The aim of these shows is that each show is show of two halves with no support act where anything goes-and the wheel has the final say. The wheel is spun, giving endless possibilities of what they might play in the first half, followed by a Yo La Tengo show in the second.

What struck me the last time I saw Yo La tengo live (Usher Hall in 2005, with Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, if anyone’s interested), was that they have a great collective sense of humour between the three members, Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan and James McNew. They crack jokes about what we might expect, and get a member of the audience on stage to spin the wheel. Will we get them performing the entire sit-com sketch (which hasn’t happened yet, on this tour, apparently) or…

We get Dump! Dump is the side project which James McNew has performed with over the years. The set starts with ‘Slow Down’ which is one of the more mellow numbers in this part of the set. While I’m not the authority on Yo La Tengo who can tell you everythign about each track…it doens’t matter. I’m just swept away, along with everyone else in the audience. My perosnal highlight is the re-working of Prince’s ‘The Beautiful Ones,’ originally on Purple Rain. Dump did, in fact, release an entire album of Prince covers, appropriately (if baitingly) entitled That Skinny Motherfucker With the High Voice?.

The second set is Yo La tengo – but being Yo La Tengo, it’s not just the same songs that they play every night. What is brought home is that Messrs. McNew and Kaplan are most definitely up there on a par with the likes of J Mascis and Thurston Moore in terms of the guitar-awesomeness stakes. After twenty minutes of ear drum buzz wonderfulness, thy take the pace right down and give us a frail and gorgeous ‘Tears Are In Your Eyes’ with Georgia on lead vocals.

YLT have always given the world a mixture of feedback madness and understood the beauty of the sugar-coated pop song. It’s great to hear ‘Beanbag Chair’ with Ira on piano (am I the only person who thinks this is like Ben Folds Five? In a good way, obviously!) and to hear the two worlds coming together in the song that got me into them in the first place, ‘Sugarcube.’ I leave with my ears ringing…

This was the first gig I’d been to since the birth of my son nearly three months ago, and it was an awesome ‘welcome back’ into the gig-going world. Long may Yo La Tengo flourish.

Yo La Tengo -‘Beanbag Chair.’ mp3

Album Review – Nik Freitas

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Nik Freitas -‘Saturday Night Underwater’ (Affairs Of the Heart)

It’s been three years since his last album Sun Down. Since then, Nik Freitas has been busy chalking up impressive entries on his extra-curricular CV. This has included becoming a member of Conor Oberst’s Mystic Valley band, who he played guitar with live and on record. Not only that, hethen joined the Broken Bells (Danger Mouse and The Shins’ James Mercer) as part of their touring band.

I mention this not to flesh out the review – but because it’s clear that as well as helping pay the bills, it’s also inpacted on his own work. These collaborations have fed into Saturday Night Underwater. This album sees him incorporating electronic instruments into the mix, giving the album more depth and a rather more adventurous feel than its’ predecessor. rather like Oberst’s Bright Eyes album Digital Ash In A Digital Urn, this record rather goes against the grain of what is often expected from the usual singer-songwriter mould. Opening with the excellent title track, there’s a warm, fuzzy feeling from this album throughout.

More than just that, though, there’s a feeling that in a world saturated with singer-songwriters, Freitas is broadening his palette. The electronic work is the basis of much of this album, rather than just as afterthought of sonic window-dressing. Indeed, the record only dips when he plays it a little more conventional.

I hope to see him venture more down this road.

Saturday Night Underwater is relased by Affairs Of The Heart on June 6.

To download the mp3 of ‘Middle’ from the album go here