The Chemistry of Common Life
Fucked Up
(MATADOR)

I got pink eye once. I was in the fifth grade, and I spent the better of a day home from Catholic grade school trying to see how much pus I could squeeze out of my eyelids. It was a fruitless attempt at wasting time, much like a lot of punk rock is these days.

Fucked Up singer Pink Eye does anything but waste time. He and his Toronto ensemble mete out this melee of disturbed postpunk. I’m pretty sure I’d never wanna meet Pink Eye in a dark alley, but that’s what classic punk singers used to inspire: fear. I was as frightened of G.G. Allin and Henry Rollins as the next all-ager. Pink Eye might be a nice guy, but the photos and the music say different, and that’s as it should be. Sonically, they’re a refreshing nonsequitur. Flute intros, random, maudlin instrumentals (”Golden Seal”), and murderous attitude — it’s a punk aesthetic that’s updated the energy with better instruments and more palpable insanity (their fans’ wrecking the offices of MTV Canada but one example). Louisville could use a little of this right now. —Mat Herron