Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, Sat 7 May
words: NOEL GARDNER photos: SIMON AYRE
★★★★☆
There’s a pole situated a few feet in front of the stage in this venue, the ground floor of Clwb Ifor Bach. It presumably – I’m not a structural engineer – performs some kind of supporting task, and isn’t huge and obtrusive like the ones in the old Cardiff Barfly, so you don’t tend to notice it. Its role in this excellent and sweaty afternoon gig involves a Buzz writer who isn’t me; Damien Abraham, the lead singer of Fucked Up, is making his way back to the stage after clambering around the room, and pauses to tap the Buzz writer on the shoulder. Then runs round the other side of the pole and laughs. I don’t know about you but personally, this will never not be funny. Even when people do it to me.
Anyway, this is kind of a snapshot of Fucked Up, or at least their image circa 2011. Hailing from Toronto and active for nearly a decade, they play raging punk rock songs about corrupt police and child abuse and the complicated futility of religious belief systems, then pause to pose for a photo in the pit, or wear a plastic cup as a hat. They can wax situationist and spout Gnostic, but when you’re in the mixer and you can’t hear the words (and they play loud’n’hard – what are, in essence, fairly melodic tunes turn into a screaming blur at the epicentre) they just seem like the goofiest of goofs. The sextet have weathered this contradiction splendidly since getting known outside of underground punk circles about five years back. Their fanbase at this point consists of indie kids and diehard punkers in pretty much equal measure; their songs maintain punk rock’s basic tenets, but are ambitious and grandiose.
This tour precedes Fucked Up’s third studio album, a lengthy concept record called David Comes To Life. It has been suggested it might prove to be their version of Green Day’s American Idiot, but they are almost certainly too obtuse and blasé about fame for that. If they play any of the album today, it isn’t introduced by name. Instead, there’s lashings of jams from their tremendous 73-minute debut LP Hidden World; a little from followup The Chemistry Of Common Life and a little more from the pre-Hidden World singles. Damien sits crosslegged above some sofas, redolent of Jello Biafra mocking meditation while singing the Dead Kennedys’ California Uber Alles, while the ever-stoic musicians blaze through Two Snakes. By David Comes To Life (the song from Hidden World) he’s almost out the door of the venue; a bit later, possibly Crooked Head, he’s at the bar politely requesting water. Police, their most explicitly ‘hardcore’ song, is an excuse for scads of audience members to bawl into the mic.
If you’ve seen Fucked Up before, most of this will probably sound familiar to you – although if you’ve not seen them in this venue, you might not have been treated to such a display of furniture exploration, Damien noting that this is a favourite venue of his as “there’s so much to climb on”. If not, or if this was your first time… it’s quite a spectacle, isn’t it? As with other modern rock bands who deem the stage restrictive – Les Savy Fav, Monotonix – the hijinks are so paramount that some spectators might burn out on it. Fucked Up themselves don’t seem about to do that, though, perhaps because they’ve stayed grounded enough to be grateful that people pay them to act the goat like this. Indeed, they’re playing an afternoon show today so they can for in an evening one in Bristol too.
A mention for the two bands they’ve brought on tour, too, both in the UK for the first time. Black Lungs feature two members of rubbish Canadian band Alexisonfire, who have been here plenty, but are a fairly different beast, playing uncomplicated gruff hardcore with a presumed Black Flag influence. Wade Macneil, the singer, has a Dead Milkmen shirt on – this is good – and an appealing line in stage patter. Before them are Danish four-piece Iceage, all in their teens and responsible for one of this writer’s favourite punk records in years, New Brigade. Jittering through 20 minutes or so of dark, pacey post-punk with the aggression of early hardcore, they don’t disappoint. They don’t have much to say to us, especially compared to the two other bands, but you don’t always need to.