It's been a good year to be Fucked Up. Success was never their primary intention, but after near riots (and/or a bridge collapse) at SXSW and more and more buzz building, Fucked Up signed to a larger label in the States after releasing a full-length last year on Jade Tree. While it wasn't a surprise that they moved to a larger company, I never thought in a million years it would be on Matador. Not that Matador wasn't the first label (ok, after Twin Tone) that I became a catalog fan of, but after Pavement became the big deal over there, I lost interest for a bunch of years, but it seems like George and I are liking the same stuff again.
Fucked Up are no stranger to esoterica, releasing a slew of releases in odd formats that seemed to simultaneously evaporate and be deleted. The CD version of Year Of The Pig reviewed here has four versions: the album version (in all of it's eighteen-minute glory), US, UK and Japanese edits, plus three b-sides and a cover. Year Of The Pig is the second of their tributes to the Chinese Zodiac and weighs in heavily on the Keith Morris-era Black Flag end of things. It starts with a bit of a red herring in the pretty female vocals but Pink Eyes soon brays his way into the fray and it's off to the races for the next fourteen or so minutes. The b-sides are good and the cover is a song by Castlemusic, whose singer Jennifer Castle provides the aforementioned female vocals on the single.
This EP is the predecessor to the first Fucked Up full-length on Matador, a record alleged to be called The Chemistry Of Common Life. It's due out in October. This EP is available now on the Matador site for $7. I think there's a pre-order for the vinyl of Chemistry, too.
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