Fucked Up: Best Of 2008

01/05/09 3:20pm

by Noah Love (CHARTattack)

It didn't matter if you watched Fucked Up perform on MTV Canada or were at Sneaky Dee's for one of their Halloween shows — if you could see and hear the group, it was enough to declare them the best live act of 2008.

Driven by the material from their watershed sophomore effort, The Chemistry Of Common Life, Fucked Up's live intensity was a story in itself. It landed them on magazine covers and drew the likes of J Mascis, Vampire Weekend and even Moby to share stages with them.

Singer Damian Abraham (a.k.a. Pink Eyes) was in the middle of it all. His voice — described by The Onion as a "glass-gargling roar" — and no-holds-barred performance ethos brought much of the attention that followed the group.

CHARTattack caught up with Abraham to discuss the making of Chemistry, the Canadian music industry and a new addition to his young family.

CHARTattack: Were there things you wanted to do with The Chemistry Of Common Life that you couldn't do when you recorded your full-length debut, Hidden World?
Damian Abraham: Yeah, like take our time. I think that was the big thing.

Hidden World was a real learning experience for us on how, for lack of a better word, big a label like Jade Tree operates. They need six months lead time between when you hand in the record and when they put out the record, and no label was willing to put out a record between November and January.

So with Hidden World, we had our backs against the wall. We had to get the record done in May to get it out in October, that was in 2006. So we really rushed it. We were in the studio doing these marathon sessions until 4 a.m., trying to get all the mixing and the art done.

And there's a lot of mistakes on it. There's no self-editing on that thing. It could have been recorded live off the floor for all intents and purposes. There's no one going, "Maybe we should cut down the five-minute instrumental song in that song." We were like, "All right! Here it is, it's done." Because we had also screwed up and didn't get our guitars [tuned properly] before we started recording, so we had to re-record all these songs because everything was out of tune. That's a rushed record.

So we knew this time we weren't going to do that. We took about six months to record, and not six solid months. We'd go off and do other stuff, listen to it, come back and do more stuff. It kind of allowed us to layer things a little more and self-edit. We were able to decide certain things shouldn't be on the record because they didn't fit.

Also with Hidden World, a lot of the songs were older songs that we had already recorded. This time, we started fresh, and we were writing all these songs for this LP, so everything was new and could actually write an LP as opposed to fit a bunch of songs on the record.

A lot of your recordings include female voices or melodic ones, which stand in pretty stark contrast to your own. Where did the idea to mix these two elements come from?
When I'm writing the vocal parts, there are things I can imagine it sounding like that I would not be able to replicate, given my incredible range. But definitely when I'm listening to the songs, I'm like, "It would be great to have a Dallas Green singing on this song," just to do the stuff I can't do. So it's more like who would fit.

That's why you're in a band, so you can meet all these different types of people and, if need be, you can put them on your recordings. People have critiqued it because there's not a lot of hardcore people on these records.

Are there other people you'd like, or you're planning to work with, on future recordings?
We just did the 12-hour show with [Dinosaur Jr.'s] J Mascis. He came and played some songs with us. I'd love to have him play on a record. I really wanted him to sing on this record, but he said only if I wrote the lyrics for him in Finnish. I didn't know if he was joking or not, so I decided not to pursue it. So someone like him, or Matt Sweeney, who we will probably work with on the David Valentine EP.

Any time you get to work with a new person, it offers — and I know this will sound totally cliche — a new perspective on what you're doing. When Owen Pallett [Final Fantasy] came in and wrote violin parts for Hidden World, we were like, "Whoa." We never really thought of it like that. That's the best way to be in a band, is to collaborate.

Because we're not really like a band with each other, anyway. Most of the time in this band we're like collaborators. When we recorded this record, I think Jonah [Falco, drums] was the only one who was in the studio kind of the whole time. The rest of us came and went to do our parts.

You guys were initially cagey about doing full-length records. What turned you around on that?
I think it was one of those things where we wanted to do a full-length, and then we'd get time to dedicate the songs for the LP and we'd go, "Nah, let's just do a seven-inch instead."

I think, given the time, I could name 1,000 classic punk seven-inches, but I could probably only name 100 essential punk LPs. It's so much harder with aggressive music to make a classic LP because it doesn't flow as well. You need downtime, et cetera, et cetera. Not that we did with Hidden World, but we didn't before Hidden World have enough confidence as a band to make an LP.

There's a Q&A on the Matador Records website where you described the "Canadian music industry" as a pet peeve. What in particular were you peeved about?
I think that was a particularly bad day when I filled that out. But I think it was more the fact that the Canadian music industry — and I'm certainly not talking about Canadian bands — it's an industry built on making sure that it's self-preservationist. Like, if you watch any of these award shows, it's the same sorts of people winning every year. And it's based on an establishment kind of thing. The same people get government grants every time they apply.

I was just kind of frustrated that we're insiders looking in, still. Here we are, this band that's getting incredible amounts of attention anywhere else, but can't get a break in Canada. But, you know, that's a first world problem if there ever was one. I'm happy we're in the position we're in, period.

I think I filled that out the day after the Junos, watching these people pat each other on the back and being like, "We did it again," and I was mad that Attack In Black didn't get nominated for an award when I thought they put out one of the best records of the year. So it was a lot of things building up and, unfortunately, I took it out on the entire industry.

By the way, congrats on your 768th day of marriage [there's an internet site with a running counter of the length of Abraham's marriage].
Thank you! And my wife's pregnant now. I heard the heartbeat today for the first time at the midwife.

We're, as of the end April, going to take a breather for a couple of months and then kind of just do festivals and work our way back into it in the fall. It's pretty insane. Who'd have thought Pink Eyes would be a dad? Son of Pink Eyes, Daughter of Pink Eyes will be the sequel.

Thank God my wife's responsible because I'd hate to see what I'd make that poor kid do. I'd be teaching him how to break bottles over his head in the way that you inflict the least amount of damage.