Just never got the time to finish my end-of-year round-up in 2011, so I’ll set about mopping up the stragglers right here in the ’12.
Fucked Up,
“Queen of Hearts” / David Comes to Life
The mighty “Queen of Hearts” single contains the best chat-up line I can possibly think of: “Hello, my name is David“. That, my friends, is a winner. The parent album by the Canadian hardcore band (who I’d never even heard of before 2011) is a four act, 18-track behemoth, which weighs in at a patience-testing 78 minutes. So, it’s basically this shouty-punk concept album about David, a light bulb factory worker who falls in love with a girl called Veronica, a communist revolutionary who – spoiler alert – gets killed during her attempt to blow up the factory.
No, it’s not really a toe-tapper, and, in truth, between Damian Abraham’s own brand of Sgt Throat-Cancer style singing, and the unrelenting, heads-down guitar attack it gets quite wearing before long, if not lyrically incomprehensible. Taken in bite-size pieces, however (the LP’s ‘four act’ break-down helps here), and the result can be exhilarating, and even very affecting once you’ve untangled the dense knot of lyrics. Daring album, interesting band. Really good live, apparently.
