Feeling aggro? Does life have you down? Are you looking for other alternatives to corporate influence? If you have answered yes to all of those questions, I may have a tune for you to contemplate your navel. If I said you were in the process of staring at your shoes or gazing further downward, I would be suspect. Not bad for a group of Canadians.
Today, Toronto’s own Fucked Up share “Found,” the second single off their forthcoming album One Day (out Jan. 27th via Merge Records). “Found” follows the lead single, the album’s title track, which “challenges listeners to open up to the possibilities for love” (Consequence). Regarding “Found,” guitarist and songwriter Mike Haliechuk had this to say:
I used to live on Davenport Road, which is one of the oldest streets in North America, and has been a First Nations trail for thousands of years, running along the north shore of Lake Iroquois, which receded after the last ice age. Just to the east was Taddle Creek, which was buried underground during the 19th century to build the streets I walk on. I thought about gentrification a lot, watching little stores get swallowed up by big buildings until I realized I am one of those big buildings. The name of the song comes from the Shadi Bartsch translation of The Aeneid, where she points out that the words “found” and “stab” open and close the book, which are two meanings for the same Greek verb. That discovery is actually conquest, and that settlement is always violence. And that any story I try to tell myself about the place I found to live can only be a story to justify the expansion of one people across the world of another.
Fucked Up have been known for their epic scale in the past, from towering concept albums to 12-hour performances—so it might be a surprise that their sixth studio album is their shortest to date, written and recorded in the confines of one literal day (hence the title). Don’t mistake size for substance, though: The band’s sound has only gotten bigger, more hard-charging, with even denser thickets of melody. If that sounds like a study in contrasts, well, that’s Fucked Up for you—and you shouldn’t expect, or want, anything different. “I wanted to see what I could record in one day.” That singular idea came to mind for Haliechuk in the closing months of 2019, and it forms the ideological and structural backbone of One Day. Haliechuk got himself into a studio and proceeded to write and record the record’s ten tracks over three eight-hour sessions, reconnecting with the core of his and the band’s songwriting essence in the process. “After you’ve been in a band for this long, you lose track of what your sound actually is,” he explains. “Twenty-four hours can feel like a long time, but you can get a lot done then, too. It can feel like forever and one minute at the same time. If you work on something for one day, it can end up being really special.” “This record is about how we see time passing in our lives,” drummer Jonah Falco continues while discussing how the emotional and technical approaches of One Day collided. “It represents the realization of what Fucked Up’s songwriting process has always been, which is the genesis of an idea from one person spread to other members. All of the development happened spontaneously with this album, which meant no time to second-guess. You had to be confident.” And One Day is an undeniable work of confidence from a band that continues to operate at the top of their game, making music that’s guaranteed to last a lifetime and beyond.
