Forget about thinking of Fucked Up’s 18-track, 80-minute rock opera epic David Comes to Life as a post-millennial Tommy, because the wildly inventive concept album is, as frontman Damian “Pink Eyes” Abraham himself suggests, more along the lines of a pomo indie-punk Rashomon. A magnum opus told from multiple perspectives by unreliable narrators with dubious motives, the Toronto musical collective’s absurdly ambitious effort is part unabashed love story, part whodunit mystery, part psychothriller, part existentialist exploration, part lefty agit-prop.
Musically speaking, David Comes to Life is just as rich, layered, and complex as its narrative, with Fucked Up somehow developing greater proficiency and adding more eclectic elements to its guitar-driven aesthetic without losing any of the aggro intensity that got the group noticed in the first place. Indeed, the bold, sprawling imagination that goes into David’s storyline is part and parcel of the daring, adventurous spirit that has spurred Fucked Up to offend sensibilities and defy simple labels all along, blurring arbitrary lines between styles and genres.