Crooked Head

I hate it when people like a given band for their "talent." I avoid using talent to describe any band. The best bands lack any sort of talent. They just write good songs. But there's one thing I have to say about Fucked Up: they're a hardcore punk band with some legitimate talent. You know the deal: Canadian band fronted by a self-described 300 pound baby writes six minute punk epics with a situationist bent, satisfying bookish critics and upped-punx alike. Their new album, Chemistry Of Common Life, pushes the band forward in a way that makes a lot of sense. You get the punk rawk, but also piccolo solos, bongos... you know the deal, you've read the reviews. They brought the whole brutal-yet-philosophical-and-high-minded mess to the Barbary last night. It blew people's heads off.

Like any punk show, it's important to talk about the crowd, which, halfway through the first song, had a gaping hole ripped into it. That led to the usual bouncing off of other people business. It was a lot of fun because, this being a Fucked Up show as opposed to, say, a Champion show, one has to keep this up for more than just two minutes at a time. There were a few points where vocalist Pink Eye entered the audience, picked somebody up and used them as a sort of human battering ram to get through the motionless back-half of the room. He also donkey kicked some longhair in the face which was badass.

Fucked Up closed the often ascendant set with a cover of Wire's "12XU;" Fitting, seeing as my soundtrack for the last two weeks of weird frustration has been Wire and Fucked Up. At a time when punk is at a really strange crossroads, Fucked Up, justifiably, rise above both trendy bullshit and those trashy kids in G.B.H. shirts longing for a scene they were too late to ever be a part of.