“Never sink and never hide / They tried to break our dream, but child: / Joy Stops Time”.
I was sent an unfinished version of Dose Your Dreams so that I might contribute string
parts. I couldn’t stop listening to the rough mixes I received. A friend asked me how the
record was. I replied, “My God, Fucked Up have made their Screamadelica .”
And psych-rock-groove it is. The drums mixed wide, propensity for drones, for delay pedal,
for repetition, groove. The politics and aesthetics of hardcore married to an “open format”
approach to genre. Elements of doo-wop, krautrock, groove, digital hardcore.
“None of Your Business Man” opens the album in familiar enough territory, a sax-assisted
exit from an office space. But things get psychedelic very quickly. By the time the title track
arrives, Mike Haliechuk is whispering, wah pedals are in full effect, and we’re wearing
oversized t-shirts and pinwheeling. “Accelerate,” the lyrical centerpiece of the album,
storms in like Boredoms on a bullet train and dissolves into a digital nightmare. The album
closer, “Joy Stops Time,” finds Fucked Up at their most Düsseldorfian, nearly eight minutes
of blissful motorik.
At the center of it all is Damian Abraham’s scream—a man chained, a man tortured, a true
protagonist. The effect is one of an epic, every chapter attempting its own narrative
devices, its own genre hybridization—and it works, it works so insanely well. The drama
unfolds like a miniature world of many parts being explored, a map being illuminated,
location by location.
As with David Comes to Life , there is a story here. David—who once came to life—is now
indentured to a desk job. David meets the elderly Joyce who closes his eyes, opens his mind,
and sends him on a spiritual journey. David embarks on his own metaphysical odyssey. He
sees a stage adaptation of his own life. He speaks to an angel in a lightbulb. He sees an
infinite series of universes as simulations within simulations.
Meanwhile, Lloyd—Joyce’s lover—was sent, decades ago, by Joyce on the same odyssey,
but was lost in the void. Lloyd seeks to be found and reunited with his lover. Where will
David end up? Will Joyce and Lloyd be reunited?
Dose Your Dreams— meaning: treat your dreams as you would a dream, allow yourself to be
lost within them, allow them to open your heart and your mind, enjoy them as you would a
drug. Reach out for my hand and pull me close.
—Owen Pallett
June 2018
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