David Comes To Life

David Comes To Life is a punk rock opera by Fucked Up. A story about love, a bombing and that messes with the fourth wall of the story. The energetic music and performance create a fabulous album. The contrast between the tense vocals of the male singer and the female vocals are top notch. It is a long album, but it has a story to tell and that takes time. Great submission!

Look, I can understand some of the criticisms of this record: its length, the vocals might not be your thing… …but have you listened to “Turn the Season”? It’s a perfect song. No notes. One of my favorite songs of all time. If that song doesn’t make you feel alive, doesn’t get your head bangin’…man, I feel for you. Plus, this is an amazing guitar record. Big hooks, lots of layered parts and interesting interplay. It’s worth listening to this record attentively.

Another Canadian rock band, but this one is actually pretty interesting. David Comes to Life starts off with some prog rock wankery in the first song only to immediately pivot to hardcore punk of all things. I learned, after a glance at Wikipedia, that this is a post-hardcore/hardcore punk rock opera. A very interesting mix of genres given the historic rivalry between punk and prog, but I think it's done quite well, it's definitely more firmly on the hardcore side. David Comes to Life is 77 minutes long, and it doesn't really feel as long as it is. The album does suffer from being a bit samey, from the second song onwards it mostly revolves around aggressive sounding post-hardcore music with screamy vocals and doesn't stray too far away outside of the occasional proggy noodling. I like the vocals and the music though so it worked for me. As it's a rock opera there is a story which I didn't catch on first listen because the screamy vocals are hard to understand. I'll have to listen again while reading the lyrics. Should it be on the list: Probably not but you could make a case for it. Top 3 songs: It's hard to separate the songs as the album is a package rather than having standouts. I may edit this on future listens, but I think it defeats the point of the album.

Perfection let down by poor lyrics, I can overlook it for how great the music is.

"Excessive? Sure. Ridiculous? At times. Brilliant? Sounds pretty damn close to it." Can't disagree with this slogan used for the Polaris nomination of this album. *The Chemistry Of Common Life*, Fucked Up's previous LP, remains a more digestible offering for me, and it hits pretty much the same marks without being as long as *David Comes To Life*. But I guess that the latter is the one album where the manifold ambitions of this Canadian pop-punk / 'indie" hardcore-punk act are all displayed in a single outing, whether those ambitions are narrative or musical / melodical. If you're fine with the grunting and barking of a vocalist such as Damian Abraham, over a sort of indie-rock-adjacent melodic punk, you're in for a treat. As usual with that sort of concept album / narrative album harking back to rock operas of days yonder, the narrative is a little hard to follow without notes on the side. Which is why I only wish the band had edited parts of the tracklist for a slightly shorter result -- who cares if the narrative is a little obfuscated, as long as the tunes are good? Musically, a couple of songs in act 2 don't bring anything essential for my ears, for instance -- even if the last cut from this "act", "Serve Me Right", is a pretty cool one. Surely you could trim that sort of fat without ruining the integrity of your "story", whatever it is. This is the only pointed criticism I would hurl towards this album. The three other "acts" are stellar from start to finish. My two favorite songs are at the end of act 3, "Ship Of Fools" and "A Little Death" (that epic dual guitar work in the middle section of the latter). And you have other terrific highlights throughout anyway ("Queen Of Hearts", "The Other Shoe", "Running On Nothing", "Inside A Frame" -- like a Broken Social Scene song played by a punk band --, or the ternary and hypnotic "One More Night", with the frail and wonderful voice of Jennifer Castle guesting at its end ; ditto for the weird Kurt Vile vocals on the closer "Lights Go Up", which somehow also fit with the rootsy Americana rock artistry of this one guest). Lots and lots of great moments in this record. Oh and also, the recurring throbbing soundscape representing the light bulbs in the artwork is a nice touch. Those light bulbs are the symbol of the factory worker protagonist in the story having trouble reaching true emancipation, including from the narrative he's himself a part of, if I understood the meta aspects of the yarn correctly...But more than anything, the Godspeed You! Black Emperor-inspired instrumental post-rock opener in which that guitar effect first appears ("Let Her Rest") is also a great piece all by itself. Surely, there are too many grand ideas in *David Comes To Life* to fit in a shorter record such as *The Chemistry Of Common Life*. Which is why I'm glad that it exists as well. 3.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums, rounded up to 4. 8.5/10 for more general purposes (5 for the musicianship and production values + 3.5 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 118 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 124 (including this one) Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 281 ---- Émile, *quatre* nouveaux messages pour toi au dessus, du *Solid State Survivor* de Yellow Magic Orchestra au *Atrocity Exhibition* de Danny Brown

There's a sheer contrast between cleanly played punk music and the screaming vocals, but somehow it first well together.

At first when I saw this album from a group called "Fucked Up" from Toronto I thought this was the band I saw at the Bumbershoot music festival in 2009. That performance made a big impression on me. As I listened, though, it didn't seem right so I started digging around and then came to the realization that I had seen the Toronto based "Holy Fuck" band. Oops. Despite this confusion they are significantly different although both are something I'd recommend you listen to before you die. I love the juxtaposition of the female vs. male vocals of this band. And while they are a hardcore band darn if they don't make some pretty catchy hardcore tunes. I love the idea of this concept record and am glad to have made its acquaintance!

Rating: 8/10 Best songs: The other shoe, Serve me right, I was there, The recursive girl

Music is solid but once again the vocals kinda take me out of it a bit. Instrumentals are great but this is just long and a lot of screaming.

Play loud. 3/5

Musically straightforward but well done, feeling more on the rock side of the spectrum to me. The primary vocal is doing the heavy lifting on the hardcore identification of this, which is a problem because I was really not up for a solid hour plus of that singing style. The additional vocalists were a welcome respite from all the growl-hollering but not enough of one. Try as I might I couldn't extract any of the narrative I read about this album having on Wiki or much of the lyrics generally.

One of the biggest gulfs i’ve ever heard between how much I dug the music and how much the vocals brought the whole thing down. They are super out of place here.

Way too long

The music is alright, but I just can't with the singing. I don't understand the appeal. A little bit of shouting/growling/whatever you want to call it is okay, but as a general style of singing it just wears on me. 2.5 stars, rounding to 3.

Very screamy but kind of cool

Pretty dope

Wasn’t sure what to make of a band called fucked up, but this is very impressive and tight hardcore music. My only gripe would be the album is too long for my personal preference.

"Mom, I'm going to the Fucked Up concert! Love you!" I like the concept-album aspect of it and the musicality is really good. But the band name is stupid and the 77 minutes of screaming gets to you.

This type of music does not have the power to be interesting for this long. If this were 35 minutes yeah great, but at this length it's exhausting and tiring. It absolutely does not have the legs to sustain this concept for almost 80 minutes. Halfway through I was insanely bored and tired of it. A slog to get through. My personal rating: 2/5 My rating relative to the list: 2/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Not good

Serve Me Right // 2.5/5

This didn't have much in the way of redeeming qualities. Competent playing, otherwise derivative and boring.

This man doesn't appear to be in a very swell mood.

music isn't bad, there's just too much screaming

I'm not entirely sure what happened when I listened to this. I was on a moderate hike - about an hour and a half or so - and therefore easily should have had time to finish this. However, after about an hour or so I found myself thinking how samey everything was. I checked the playlist, and sure enough I discover that I'm listening to track 3. I guess this potential for confusion may stem from the one-trick nature of the vocals, which would be absolutely fine in a punk album lasting 25-35 minutes. He sounds very much like Warner Brothers' Tasmanian Devil. Again, not really an issue would that it were less than an hour 17 of it. Overall, way too samey, you can have too much of an alright thing.

I listened to this but honestly do not recall it

The music and lyrics were strong enough to withstand this voice.