That David Comes To Life got Spin's album of the year is pretty crazy, I have to admit. But that could very well be a comment on the music of 2011, and not be so much about Fucked Up.
But Spin also wrote “could be the most epic punk album ever“ about David Comes to Life, which means, of course, that the album stands alongside Nevermind the Bullocks, Somewhere in the Between, The Monitor, Wild Gift, etc.
And that idea is just absurd.
For the most part I find this album bland. What isn't bland is vamping (up to nothing, really). I really don't like the way this guy sings. It is entirely too forced, and too up in the mix (more on the mixing in a minute). My favorite parts are when the girl starts singing. She reminds me of Claudia Gonson. It is the only thing on this album that has any dimension or life or even catchiness.
They've muddled up the guitars to the point of no definition. Strumming is nearly unheard. Instead, we get slight increases in the volume of the fuzz. That's alright; you can do that; you can pull that off. But Fucked Up does not.
So it isn't musically epic. I will give admit a certain literary epicness. It's a rather complex undertaking, one that I will not try to explicate here. So good job on that. I can't figure out if I think the differences between what he actually says and what's in the lyric booklet are important to the puzzle. I suspect that they are, but I can't quite tell you why. That, too, is very interesting.
Yea, so. There's a lot of interesting stuff in the lyrics: unreliable narrators, metafictive elements. All that good stuff. But the delivery is subpar.
A far cry from album of the year, and I can't imagine the kind of stretch you would have to make to think that this album was among the most epic punk albums ever. Hell, I'm not even sure David Comes To Life is punk. Feels more like The Who tried to play a set on the Strokes' gear. And their lead singer sounds like the love child of William Shatner and the guy from The Dropkick Murphys.
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