Album review: F***ed Up: David Comes To Life
If you thought F***ed Up were just this feral hardcore mob from Canada with the crazy bald singer then … you'd be right. But with their latest offering they have gone conceptual, producing a mammoth 78-minute rock opera set in a lightbulb factory in Britain in the late 1970s (it says here). Every track is attacked like a cavalry charge, retaining that tightly coiled punk delivery, but the scope is so much more expansive – this is a band with three guitarists after all, and they are judiciously employed on relatively mellow rocker Truth I Know (their Who moment), the chiming indie strains of The Recursive Girl, soaring psych number Life In Paper, the epic scale of I Was There and the practically euphoric conclusion Lights Go Up. In all honesty, you'll need determination to decipher the words of rasping, bellicose narrator Octavio St Laurent, as performed by frontman Damien Abraham, but the music is enough of a trip in itself.