Fucked Up win 2009 Polaris Music Prize

[Photo from polarismusicprize.ca]

Toronto hardcore punks Fucked Up have taken home the 2009 Polaris Music Prize.

Each year a group of Canadian music critics, bloggers and all round industry peeps get together and award the Canadian release they consider to have the most artistic merit.
They beat fellow Canadian luminaries Metric, Great Lakes Swimmers, and Malajube to recieve the $20,000 prize.
Past winners of the prize have included Final Fantasy and Caribou.

Damian Abraham aka Pink Eyes said they would put the $20,000 towards a charity project raising awareness about missing Canadian aboriginal women.

"There were over 500 missing aboriginal women in Canada and we're going to put out a benefit record to try to draw attention to it and raise some money for these people," Abraham said.

"It's a marginalized group, it's a racialized crime, it's ignored. So we're putting out a benefit Christmas record with some really funny guests and we're gonna pay for it."

Pretty incredible we think.

Fucked Up's album The Chemistry Of Common Life is out now.

Fucked Up - No Epiphany (No Age Remix)

Here's the No Age remix of Fucked Up's No Epiphany available on the No Epiphany 7".

No Epiphany (No Age Remix) mp3

No Epiphany is out now through Matador.

Fucked Up feature on Pitchfork

Head over to Pitchfork to check out an interview with Canada's hardcore supremos Fucked Up and find out some interesting facts you may not have known about the band.

Pitchfork: Do you remember the first time you played New York?

Mike Haliechuk: It was in a womens' bookstore called Jane Doe Books, now closed. There were maybe 30 or 40 people there, and then we rushed to play an Adult Swim party at the Knitting Factory.

Jonah Falco: Three bands played: our tourmates, Punch You in the Face and Fourteen or Fight, and us. The whole thing was decorated with papier-mâché of Adult Swim and "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" characters, and there was a big spread of food. This is why there was...

Damien Abraham: A huge food fight! In the top floor of the Knitting Factory was...

MH: The Rapture and Danger Mouse.

DA: But Danger Mouse played on our floor. It was pre-Grey Album, so Danger Mouse was obviously known, but it wasn't like...Danger Mouse! They threw us out of the venue, with a case that I just put in the car, having no idea what it was. We stopped and [realized] it was a turntable, a Tech 12 turntable. It might have been Danger Mouse's turntable, and it might not have been. But now it's mine.

The 'Fork gets Fucked Up

Pitchfork.tv have launched a new show called A>D>D which stands for Analog technology > mixed Digitally > and distributed Digitally.

With the premier episode featuring Toronto punk rockers Fucked Up, the makers of the show work with the idea of capturing bands with "Lo-Fi meets Hi-Fi" qualities visually and musically using only analogue equipment, editing it digitally then uploading it onto their website for all to enjoy. The full set is below:

Son The Father


Black Albino Bones


Twice Born

Fucked Up - Crooked Head

Taken from their latest album The Chemistry of Common Life comes Fucked Up's first ever official video:

Fucked Up Daytrotter session

Fucked Up are the latest band to record a Daytrotter session, playing three tracks from their new album The Chemistry of Common Life, as well as a track from their 2007 release Hidden World. The first song in the session is Magic World


You can download the session over at Daytrotter.

More videos from Fucked Up's marathon show

Recorded at their 12 hour show last month is a performance of Fucked Up covering the Black Flag track Nervous Breakdown.


Also joining Fucked Up on a couple of songs was Ezra from Vampire Weekend who unleashed his inner punk on Blitz and Descendents covers.

Someone's Gonna Die and Parents

Fucked Up marathon show mini-doco

Last month saw Canada's Fucked Up put on an epic 12 hour show in New York. With guests including Ezra from Vampire Weekend, Moby and Tim Harrington from Les Savy Fav, the event has already become the stuff of legend. A documentary has been created by Rhapsody featuring live footage and interviews with Fucked Up and a few of the many guests that appeared:


Rhapsody also filmed Fucked Up playing a few of the standout tracks from their new album The Chemistry Of Common Life.

Black Albino Bones and Twice Born


Crooked Head

Matador download sampler

US label Matador have released a new Intended Play download sampler featuring a track from each of their current acts including Fucked Up, Jay Reatard, Lou Reed and A.C. Newman.

The sampler is a musical mixbag, from A.C. Newman’s jewel-like pop songscapes to the majestic neo-punk of Fucked Up to the crystalline depths and heights created by Shearwater to a track from Lou Reed’s painstaking, thoughtful, first-ever performance of his controversial classic album Berlin.

Download the 13 track .zip file: Matador Intended Play Fall 2008

1. A.C. Newman There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve [NEW AND UNRELEASED. mp3] (from Get Guilty, due out late January)
2. Belle and Sebastian The State I Am In (BBC Version)
3. Jennifer O’Connor Here With Me
4. Shearwater The Snow Leopard (Remastered) from Rook)
5. Lou Reed Caroline Says, Pt. II (Live) (from Berlin: Live At St. Ann’s Warehouse, due out November 4)
6. Mogwai The Sun Smells Too Loud
7. Fucked Up No Epiphany (from The Chemistry Of Common Life)
8. Jay Reatard An Ugly Death (from Matador Singles ‘08)
9. Jaguar Love Humans Evolve Into Skyscrapers (from Take Me To The Sea)
10. Pavement Cataracts (from Brighten The Corners: Nicene Creedence Ed., out Dec 6)
11. Brightblack Morning Light Oppressions Each (from Motion To Rejoin)
12. Times New Viking Call & Respond (from Stay Awake, out Nov 15)
13. Condo Fucks What’cha Gonna Do About It?

Fucked Up and Moby do the Blitzkrieg Bop

Continuing their whirlwind few months (which includes an NME cover and fucking up MTV's bathroom), Fucked Up recently put on a free marathon 12 hour show in New York featuring a heap of guests. Having previously worked with many collaborators including Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy), that guy from AFI and Nelly Furtado, Fucked Up continued their eclectic ways with guest appearances including Ezra of Vampire Weekend (like you've never seen him), Tim of Les Savy Fav, Vivian Girls, J. Mascis and Chris of Mind Eraser (aww, spoon). Moby also joined the band to perform a cover of Blitzkrieg Bop:


To give you a sense of how epic this show was, here's the setlist. Epic indeed.
View pics from the event here, here and here.

Fucked Up's new album The Chemistry Of Common Life has just been released. If you missed them before, here are a couple of tracks from the album:

Twice Born [mp3]


No Epiphany [mp3]

New Fucked Up album streaming on NME

Having gotten much NME love a couple of weeks ago, NME are now streaming Fucked Up's just released album, The Chemistry of Modern Life. You can listen to it in full here during this week.

Jenny Lewis, Jay Reatard and Fucked Up albums out now

Just released are three new albums that range from soulful guitar rock to hardcore (with pan flute!).

Acid Tongue is the sophomore solo album from Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis. Collaborators on the album include Elvis Costello for a duet on Carpetbaggers, Johnathan Rice, Jason Boesel, M Ward, Zooey Deschanel and Chris Robinson. All of the album was recorded in analogue in just 3 weeks, without the use of Pro-Tools. With the vocals tracked entirely live, Lewis's voice has never sounded so expressive and the narratives have never been so hard-hitting and acerbic.
"The album is boastful, vulnerable and witty, usually within the course of a single song." Prefix

Acid Tongue [mp3]


myspace.com/jennylewismusic


Matador Singles '08 is a collection of all six singles that Memphis boywonder Jay Reatard has been releasing on 7" through Matador over the past months. Not only does the release cater for those who aren’t so bothered about collecting and those who missed out on the 7”s the first time round (frenzy was so intense that it brought down the Matador server twice, once with 10,000+ attempts to buy a copy in a one minute period.), but it's also an outstanding album in its own right. Every song is a perfect snarling pop-punk gem evolving interestingly (and erratically) from punk to pop. As Pitchfork said on the subject, “In this short space of time, Reatard has cranked out more memorable songs than some acts do in their whole careers.”

Always Wanting More [mp3]


www.myspace.com/jayreatard


The new album from posthardcore wunderkinds Fucked Up is The Chemistry of Common Life. Far from being your ordinary hardcore band, Fucked Up merge elements of hardcore songwriting with up to 70 tracks of guitars, organs, winds and vocals. The songs are iconoclastic and startling, with Pink Eyes' growling vocals front and center. Though Fucked Up remain punks at heart - if quixotically diverse ones - they have created a great, weird, heavy record that stubbornly sticks in your brain and your heart. Check out front man Pink Eyes on the cover of NME.

Twice Born [mp3]


Looking For Gold - Fucked Up Blog

Fucked Up on NME

With the latest edition of NME comes two firsts for the long lived mag. For starters, it's the first time the word "fuck" has appeared on the cover. So naughty. More used to having acts like Muse, Arctic Monkey and Foo Fighters appear on its covers, this is also the first time they've chosen a hardcore act to grace its glossy front page. And what a cover it is:

Fucked Up's new album The Chemistry Of Common Life is out October 4th.

A Fucked Up EPK

Fucked Up are Toronto post-hardcore band consisting of members Concentration Camp, Pink Eyes, Mustard Gas, Mr. Jo, Young Governor and 10,000 Marbles.

Their second album The Chemistry of Common Life is out October 4th. One listen to the album and it'll be clear to you that Fucked Up are far from your ordinary hardcore band. Don't believe us? Just check out their EPK below, which sees growling front man Pink Eyes being interviewed by Zach Feldberg. If you don't want to see what a "mangina" looks like, we suggest you look away at the 2:12 mark... it's a bit NSFW.



Check out the band's hilarious blog: lookingforgold.blogspot.com

No Epiphany [mp3]


Twice Born [mp3]



Earlier this year Fucked Up re-released the Year Of The Pig EP, the second in a series of songs based on the Chinese zodiac. The track is about the plight of sex workers in Canada with the initial release and companion concert generating $4,000 for a prostitution rights charity in Toronto.

Year Of The Pig (US 7″ edit) [mp3]

New Fucked Up mp3 'Twice Born'

'Twice Born' is the second track to be taken from Toronto posthardcore wunderkins Fucked Up's upcoming album 'The Chemistry of Common Life'.

Twice Born mp3

Be sure to check check out the band's blog Looking For Gold.

The Chemistry of Common Life is due out in Australia October 4th through Matador/Remote Control.