Fucked Up
Hidden World
Jade Tree Records
Do you know what I mean when I say “cartoon music”? I doubt it: so let’s take a bit o’ time to establish the parameters of this fake-ass genre I just birthed all over your computer screen. Cartoon music shall be henceforth defined as any composition introducing, in a manner at once capricious and dogged, a playful line driving relentlessly towards the tonal center, communicating a revelation through the very obviousness of its rehash. Hmm? Well, like the shit you heard on the train a couple of weeks ago: dude was definitely not sober at 3 in the afternoon and whistling some Tom and Jerry theme song shit. Yeah, in the moment you might not have been feeling it, but later, when you were, like, stepping into the shower with aims for thorough loufah action and masturbatory dalliance, you know that hobo’s tune came busting through your head, thus ensuring complete boner-sesh. Point being, this record seamlessly combines hard looking, hard living grit with the groove of a coked-up fashion designer.
Punk is steeped in the aesthetic of the skit –from the costumes, through the sound effects, to the nearly spontaneous disassembly of so-labeled “reality”- and this Toronto punk outfit is a fucking full color production. Not getting it? Okay, I rephrase. Pink eyes –Fucked Up vocalist, replete with popped collar- spits with just as much sass and vitriol as on any of this group’s 7” offerings; but unlike its pint-sized predecessors, this wax hits you with healthy amounts of orchestral looniness. Even to the ear of the Fucked Up zealot, whole measures should sound entirely foreign. Strings and whispering samples harken a Trail of Dead or Beefheart effort. But once the buzzsaw chimes in on tracks like “Crusades,” Fucked Up fall into a genitalia-crushing, Motorhead momentum. Well, track three should lay waste to your fucking hippie party, anyway. “Invisible Leader” – and at its ¾ mark it gets as perfect as a Family Circus installation– it will convert even garage-jungle-trance fans to the glorious possibility of a “punk rock” perpetually resurrected.
This band has not missed a step over the course of its tenure as “One Reason Canada is No Longer the Butt of Your Ill-Conceived Yankee Jokes.” This LP ups the ante. Incorporating a feel sorely lacking in contemporary punk, pumping out songs which at once pummel and uplift the listener, Hidden World makes pissed-off music joyful. A dear friend remarked recently, “If Fucked Up is our generation’s Black Flag, then I want another sandwich.” Yes, indeed. Fat hoagies all around, buddy: this record will devastate you like that 16” cheese steak wrecked your bowels.
-Peter Moysaenko
Posted under Hometown
This post was written by MyFriendCleveland on October 6, 2006
