|  Friday, January 29, 2010
fucked up
couple of tracks
  
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Fucked Up has had a bizarre career. The fairly straightforward hardcore punk outfit plays with a bearded dudes playing in a basement vibe and odd flourishes here and there that carry it into something more interesting than you'd expect. Couple of Tracks is their newest release and it's a compilation of their singles from 2002-2009.
In the way Fucked Up is your typical punk band, Couple of Tracks is the typical punk compilation. Clocking in at about an hour, it totals 25 songs over two discs, and it's a wonder what they left out.
It opens up with the forgettable, but appropriate track No Pasaran, the title coming from the international propaganda slogan meant to tell an enemy you will stand and defend your territory, translates to They shall not pass in English. Yeah, Fucked Up is one of those bands, and the politics don't stop at the first track.
But what's neat about Fucked Up's catalog laid out like this is that someone unfamiliar with their work gets let into it slowly with three chord garage rock and before you know it you're listening to shoegaze and surf riffs fuzzed into something oddly more like art rock.
The hardcore punk is always there, but it's almost like a Trojan horse for an indie band. Their long list of collaborators over the years, people like David Cross, Nelly Furtado, Davey Havok, cast members of Degrassi, George Petit of Alexisonfire, Broken Social Scene, Andrew W.K., and Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, just to name a few, nails home the point that either dozens of well known musicians are closet hardcore fans or that Fucked Up has something else going on under the surface (I'd personally like to think both are true).
Couple of Tracks is certainly a collection for fans, including demos, bootlegs and a few neat alternate versions of songs. But at the same time the fact it's comprised of singles certainly helps an outsider get an idea of what Fucked Up is all about. Tracks like "Anorak City", "Generation", "Crooked Head" and "Triumph of Life" are almost We Are Scientists demos (strong emphasis on almost and stronger emphasis on "demos"). -Ryan Broderick
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MP3:"Anorak City" - Couple of Tracks
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