Fucked Up’s new 80-minute monster, David Comes to Life, released yesterday by Matador, is a concept album that tells the tale of David Eliade, a young factory worker who meets his love. And then she dies. And other things happen. There’s, presumably, some sort of resolution.
Plot details are kind of pointless. As anyone who has spent countless high school nights puzzling over The Wall’s liner notes can tell you, concept albums generally don’t make much sense. And even with a browser window open to the lyric sheet at davidcomestolife.com in an attempt to decipher exactly what’s being spit through vocalist and crowd-surfing enthusiast Damian Abraham’s mouth, story details are not easy to come by. But it kind of doesn’t matter. The music is so tight, lyrics so poetic, and ideas presented so universally that this is arguably the band’s greatest accomplishment in their decade-long history.
We talked to Damian and lead guitarist Mike Haliechuk about their new album, their history, and their health insurance policy.
VICE: Was it harder writing a “concept album” than a regular old LP?
Mike Haliechuk: For me, it was actually easier. We were able to make a springboard and just dropped things into it. The phrase “concept album” is supposed to be this big, heavy, pretentious thing. But if you think about any process—whether it’s art or working in a business—if you go in without a concept it’s going to be a disaster. Doing a record with concepts is actually way more simple because you know what you’re doing from the start.
Damian Abraham: Writing the singles and other albums, you’d just put music on a tape deck—and then CD player and now an iPod—and just go about your day and put pen to paper. But this time since we had a storyline and a concept to follow, I had to do it at my desk with notes in front of me. I was never a very good student under the best of times and I’m an amazing procrastinator. And since I’ve discovered marijuana, I’ve become even better at it.
The lyrics in this one are very dense and personal. Did you guys write this thing together, or did one person lead the charge?
Mike: We never write lyrics together. I don’t think we could ever do that. It’d be too weird.
It seems like an insane amount of words to memorize.
Damian: [laughs] Yeah, there are definitely some freestyle moments on these tours coming up. It’s a long process to memorize the songs. And a pretty arduous one to take Mike’s lyrics and get them to a more manageable place for me to sing them, because Mike’s lyrics are even denser than they are on the record. With my songs it’s different, because when I’m writing them I can picture how I’m going to sing them. But with Mike, that’s not the case. He pictures someone else singing them, apparently.
The lyrics are so important for an album like this. There’s something nice about listening to the album while reading liner notes trying to solve the puzzle of this story.
It’s funny. I was talking to this dude I work with about this rapper, and I said I couldn’t get into him because the lyrics are just not my thing. And he said “I don’t care, I just want the beat.” I’m like, really? I’ve never been a fan of instrumental music. I do like Mogwai songs, but I always like the ones with singing on them more. I just never liked instrumental music. I find it really boring. I need the words. I’ve always been a big fan of [hardcore band] Integrity because they had all of these weird lyrics and symbolism that I didn’t understand at first. Part of the thrill was going out and searching the lyrics’ roots and etymologies and all those things.
For a band that started so singles-oriented, how did you get to where you’re at now—doing full-blown concept albums?
Well, and I guess this is the benefit of being there and watching it happen, but it seems like it’s been a very slow shift in the band. It has been ten years, right? It certainly isn’t like we woke up one day and said, let’s start doing things this way as opposed to what we did previously. It just kind of happened. It was very organic.
Mike: We waited five or six years before we did the first full-length record, and because of that there was a lot of built-up pressure. “What’s the first record going to be like after all these years?” The first one is really long as well, so that’s just our motif now. When we do something that’s as big as a full-length, it has to be really, really big.
But just looking at where you were to where you are now, how would you describe the change in the band? Would you say you’ve grown up or…?
Damian: I don’t want to say grown up. I never want to imply that what we’re doing now is better than before. I wouldn’t say “The Other Shoe” is a better song than “Baiting the Public” or “Police.” It’s just a different song. That’s been the real defining thing for us all the way through—once we do something it’s like, OK, let’s try to do something different next time. Because there’s no point in trying to do the same thing over and over again. It’ll just destroy you. It’ll destroy the band and destroy all your creativity.
Are you guys going to use this approach from now on?
I think this is kind of the end of this stage of the band. Not to sound like another douchey dude in a band, but I kind of feel like this is it, like this is going to be my last full record with the band. And I’m not saying I’m not going to do singles or 12-inches or things like that. But as far as an LP goes, I think the next time Fucked Up does an LP there’s going to be other people involved, or it’ll be some sort of… I’m not saying I’m going to leave the band. If they want me to do other stuff, I still will. But I kind of hope the band morphs into something different now.
Do you guys ever get any shit from record executives about the name Fucked Up?
Mike: Not anymore. It was kind of a big deal when we started getting more attention, but I think people have dealt with it. It’s a non-issue now. I mean, yeah, we don’t get played on the radio. But at the same time, we’re like a punk band that wouldn’t get played on the radio anyway. Some stores won’t pick up the record, either, and someone wrote a letter to The Guardian last week complaining about the name. So there are little things, but we really don’t need to deal with that anymore.
Did you look to other concept albums or anywhere else for inspiration?
I didn’t. I wanted to make sure we weren’t influenced by anything like other records. We could have read How to Write Scripts or whatever, but we just thought it was more important to stand out as an actual record instead of this script that follows the laws of literature.
Damian: For me, The Mumps. They’re this old New York band that was led by Lance [Loud], who was the star of the first reality TV show, called An American Family on PBS. He was the first openly gay television personality, too. He came out of the closet on that show. And he had this band called The Mumps, and they played these awesome power-pop meets almost-Gershwin songs. I think they’re brilliant. So that’s a band that tried to bridge that gap between the two places. And “Lori Meyers” by NOFX definitely inspired “Queen of Hearts.” Play-wise, Our Town was big. In it, there was this stage manager who can talk to the audience and interact with the characters, and I always thought that was cool. So Octavio is kind of based on that, except evil. And stuff like David Peace’s book GB84 about the breaking of the miners’ strike in Thatcher’s England was an influence, too. That was the idea—to set it in that time, to feed off the energy of that era.
So it was a very conscious decision to set it then?
Very much so. It was the last interesting period in history, because musically and culturally it was the rise of DIY culture—for the first time production was in the hands of the youth. Prior to that, content was always generated by the youth but production was in the hands of the elite. So punk was a very democratizing factor. And also the massive amount of labor unrest that was going on in Thatcher-era England was a big influence, and it extended to America under Reagan and also to Canada, but in a safer, gentler, training wheels-kind of way, which is typical of Canada. But we had the shift to the right, and I think we’re still living under that era.
I want to talk about the live show. It’s a pretty intense experience…
I’ve always wanted the live show to be something that, even if you don’t like the band, you can still leave with a memory of the event. We’re never going to be able to recreate the records perfectly at a live show. We have too many guitar tracks—it’s never going to work. So why not make it its own thing? That’s my philosophy about it—just make it a very visceral event. That way, if you don’t care about the music or the band you can still be entertained. These people are sacrificing their money and time and I feel as if we owe them a show, regardless of whether they like us.
When was the last time you got stitches?
Just before we left for England two weeks ago I sang at my friend’s book launch. He started going to shows in ‘74 and would take pictures of the bands, so he has these amazing photos of Blondie and The Ramones and all these bands. At the party, he had this local band backing and different vocalists would come up and do a song. During mine I decided to invoke the spirit of Toronto’s legendary Steve Leckie, who used to break glass. So I smashed a glass on my face. It required some stitches. We were leaving for England the next day, so I spent my last night in Toronto sitting in the emergency room waiting to get stitches.
Are emergency room visits just part of the band’s budget at this point?
Nobody really makes me pay for that stuff. Thankfully, we have health insurance when we’re in the US. In Canada—and God bless Canada for having this—we have subsidized health care. So it hasn’t been that costly for us as a band.
RICK PAULAS
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