Fucked Up travelled a long way from the anti-establishment punk of their first singles to the softer, classic rock-influenced tunes of 2014’s Glass Boys, but lately frontman Damian Abraham has suggested that his inimitable hardcore bark risked going from help to hindrance.
Thus, songwriter/guitarist Mike Haliechuk – whose creative visions have long differed from Abraham’s – has brought in new voices: his own, drummer Jonah Falco’s, Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis (on the fuzzy Came Down Wrong), folk singer Jennifer Castle, up-and-coming LA indie star Miya Folick, Polaris-winning Columbian-Canadian singer Lido Pimienta and more. They either duet with Abraham or, occasionally, replace him entirely. Raise Your Voice, Joyce, featuring Abraham’s vocal interplay with Jen Calleja, could be a turbo-charged B-52s. Ironically, with his furious passion framed in a totally new context, the singer is as key to Fucked Up now as ever.
That new context is an extraordinary palette of sound. Drone rock, psychedelia, krautrock, ambient, Owen Pallett’s string arrangements, power pop, electronica, disco, techno-dub, saxophone and choral singing are mixed together as Dose Your Dreams emerges as a hardcore Screamadelica. Lyrically, the album returns to long-running fictional character David Eliade, crushed into suicidal thoughts by failing capitalism and desk-job drudgery before a sorceress sends him into astral dimensions, which may be a metaphor for the album. The 18 eclectic tracks hang together because of a gleeful joie de vivre, and are the best songs of the band’s career.
