Fucked Up – Dose Your Dreams //Merge Records// (Released 5th October)

Description

£24.99 – Indies Only Limited Edition 2xLP On Yellow Vinyl With Poster & DLC

£21.99 – 2xLP Standard Edition With Poster & DLC

“I was sent an unfinished version of Dose Your Dreams so that I might contribute string parts. I couldn’t stop listening to the rough mixes I received. A friend asked me how the record was. I replied, “My God, Fucked Up have made their Screamadelica”.” – Owen Pallett

And psych-rock-groove it is. The drums mixed wide, propensity for drones, for delay pedal, for repetition, groove. The politics and aesthetics of hardcore married to an open format approach to genre. Elements of doo-wop, krautrock, groove, digital hardcore.

“None of Your Business Man” opens the album in familiar enough territory, a sax assisted exit from an office space. But things get psychedelic very quickly. By the time the title track arrives, Mike Haliechuk is whispering, wah pedals are in full effect, and we’re wearing oversized t-shirts and pinwheeling. “Accelerate,” the lyrical centrepiece of the album, storms in like Boredoms on a bullet train and dissolves into a digital nightmare. The album closer, “Joy Stops Time,” finds Fucked Up at their most Düsseldorfian, nearly eight minutes of blissful motorik.

At the centre of it all is Damian Abraham’s scream – a man chained, a man tortured, a true protagonist. The effect is one of an epic, every chapter attempting its own narrative devices, its own genre hybridization, and it works, it works so insanely well. The drama unfolds like a miniature world of many parts being explored, a map being illuminated, location by location.

As with David Comes To Life (their 2011 album), there is a story here. David (who once came to life) is now indentured to a desk job. David meets the elderly Joyce who closes his eyes, opens his mind, and sends him on a spiritual journey. David embarks on his own metaphysical odyssey. He sees a stage adaptation of his own life. He speaks to an angel in a lightbulb. He sees an infinite series of universes as simulations within simulations. Meanwhile, Lloyd, Joyce’s lover, was sent, decades ago, by Joyce on the same odyssey, but was lost in the void. Lloyd seeks to be found and reunited with his lover. Where will David end up? Will Joyce and Lloyd be reunited?

Dose Your Dreams, meaning treat your dreams as you would a dream, allow yourself to be lost within them, allow them to open your heart and your mind, enjoy them as you would a drug. Reach out for my hand and pull me close.

Tracklisting:

A1. None of Your Business Man

A2. Raise Your Voice Joyce

A3. Tell Me What You See

A4. Normal People

B1. Torch to Light

B2. Talking Pictures

B3. House Of Keys

B4. Dose Your Dreams

C1. Living In A Simulation

C2. I Don’t Wanna Live in This World Anymore

C3. How To Die Happy

C4. Two I’s Closed

C5. The One I Want Will Come for Me

D1. Mechanical Bull

D2. Accelerate

D3. Came Down Wrong

D4. Love Is An Island In The Sea

D5. Joy Stops Time