(Matador/Remote Control)

Prolific Toronto hardcore punks collate a bunch of stuff

One of the advantages of working as a punk band – in a genre of music that treasures half-arsedness done right – is that you can make a tonne of music very swiftly: even your average shitty punk band often has a discography that could put an experienced dance music producer to shame. Fucked Up are much better than your average shitty punk band, so it follows that their discography is concomitantly byzantine. Fortunately for those of us who don’t have the time of patience to collect 7-inches from the bevy of labels this band has been associated with (Matador, What’s Your Rupture?, Deranged Records, etc.), Fucked Up have collected a whole bunch of their blisteringly abrasive output that didn’t make it onto their two albums, and whacked it onto two CDs named, aptly, Couple Tracks. The bad news for those who have tuned in to Fucked Up in the wake of 2008’s post-hardcore masterpiece The Chemistry Of Modern Life is that Couple Tracks often chronicles the early years of the band, while they were learning their craft – thus these tracks often lack the more diverse instrumentation of Chemistry’s pieces, nor are they as poised or self-assured (although the two discs, taken together, form an interesting document of a band evolving). Couple Tracks is definitely only for existing fans, but even non-fans should be able to appreciate the fact that Fucked Up are doing their thing thoroughly and idiosyncratically, with no concessions to others – just what punk rock should be.

***½

CHAD PARKHILL

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