The Spirit Resonates
How fucked up are Fucked Up in 2014? After a run of releases that delighted and challenged critics with their sideways approach to hardcore (character led rock operas, epic song lengths and the like) this year's Glass Boys is a more compact, conventional affair representing the band's attempt to rein in some of those out-there tendencies while still questioning themselves at almost every turn. It's not as if they have found some mid-career pocket to ease themselves into but it's getting close.
The songs on Glass Boys interweave up to three guitars to create an intermingling sense of urgency and calm. Finessed fury. The songs offer up space for an expected but never realised big classic rock vocal performance but that would be a step too far into the mainstream one suspects. You could easily imagine Cedric Bixler-Zavala gabbling all over these songs with his gift for prog-punk histrionics. Instead, Damian Abraham sticks to his gruff yet musical hardcore shouting. Perhaps it's Fucked Up putting the brakes on - making sure they haven't actually "...traded our moral high ground so they would sing along" as he bellows on The Art of Patrons - or perhaps it's them messing with listeners' expectations. Either way it can make for a jarring experience and punk shouldn't be easy listening.
Echo Boomer, the album's opening track, rolls out the coils of alt-rock guitars that feature all over the record. These are invariably propelled by the stellar drumming of Jonah Falco however, there is a softness a, (gasp) indie rock flavour to these songs and not just in the gap for the radio vocals mentioned previously. There are floaty lines of warm guitar that you wouldn't find on a straight up hardcore record - Touch Stone is effectively a pop song without the autotune. Sun Glass will appeal to even the meekest indie-pop fan with its sweet backing vocal and ringing guitar tones despite the fear in the lyrics: "We all get replaced, retconned and upstaged, life turns a page." Fears that turn to doubts in the face of the scrubbed up sound on The Art of Patrons, "To trade a little purity to prolong the dream?". This kind of conflicted lyrical second guessing continues throughout while the songs, such as The Great Divide, hunker down and get on with the business of rocking. Warm Change throws off some of the layers for a sweat drenched and adrenaline blast before then throwing in a drifting 70s rock coda complete with churchy organ and fuzzy guitar solo whilst Led By Hand is a four minute communal shout along ("Follow you around!").
Fucked Up really do what they like on this interesting, imperfect record while Abraham grapples with what it all means to be an ageing punk rocker with a band that's broadened out musically. As the final piano notes of the title track fade it's a head scratcher as to where it sits in their back catalogue and where it takes them next but while we ponder that there are a number of taut rough yet pop rock songs here to digest. How fucked up they are are doesn't seem to be the point anymore.