Review: Fucked Up – David Comes to Life
Fucked Up – David Comes to Life (2011) [Matador] // Grade: A
Rock operas are elusive little things. Few bands have the guts to go that route, and among those who do, fewer still have the vision, skills and narrative intuition to nail it straight away. I mean, it doesn’t take much to turn a series of plot points into a hoaky hyper-drama fest; ask any dejected, would-be novelist: the whole concept’s a tall order. Here with a rock opera that makes the challenge feel like child’s play: Fucked Up and David Comes to Life.
The plot goes something like this: Boy meets girl. Boy is stoked. Boy and girl confirm new love by orchestrating life-affirming protest. Girl is killed during said protest. Boy is despondent. Faceless narrator breaks his story-telling silence to accuse boy of killing girl. Boy is conflicted, unsure of his own reality. Boy and narrator fight. Boy’s ex-girlfriend, who witnessed the death, pops up to vindicate him. God-complexed narrator confesses (sort of) to exaggerating the whole thing. Boy rediscovers life, love. Boy is reborn. Curtain. Even stripped to its bare bones, the story’s nothing to sniff at: that constant shifting of narrators, and the questionable reliability of each one, demonstrates a sense of literary nuance that would startle even seasoned playwrights. We’re talking real Our Town and Zoo Story stuff here. Which of these characters is telling the truth? Whose reality do we trust the most: David the lightbulb-factory worker? Octavio the skeptical narrator? Veronica, Vivian? And how can any of us in the audience actually be sure?
Pair that with some of the best songs Fucked Up have ever written — these grand, soaring jams that balance a fresh and wide-eyed wonder with the band’s signature steel core — and you’ve got 80+ minutes of inarguable brilliance. David Comes to Life is Tommy for the present generation: a dark and complicated plot; music that pushes to the band’s very outer reaches; an ending that, however inspirational, poses as many questions as it answers. And like The Who did so many years ago, Fucked Up are ultimately crafting a metaphor for themselves: David’s rebirth, like Tommy’s rebirth, signals their own particular dawn. Those questions of reality, truth and perception? They mirror the band’s trajectory as much as they do life at large. “Why keep watching when you know the end?” David asks in “Running On Nothing.” “Why make this journey again and again?”
Of course, his subsequent struggle leads him to the sunlit conclusion in closer “Lights Go Up: “I am old,” he says. “But I want to do it again.” Fucked Up want to do it again too, like The Who wanted to do it again, like anyone who crawls through impossible scenarios wants to look back to say: I am changed, I am scathed, but god damn it, I am still here. You hear it in poppy, upbeat early tracks like “Queen of Hearts;” the jittery and terrified wails of “Running on Nothing”; the overwhelming layers of melody on “One More Night” — Fucked Up rediscovered themselves, unearthed a new brilliance, through the analogue of David. They channeled their own mistrust and self-consciousness with Octavio. They died right along with Veronica, revived themselves through Vivian’s love and reassurance. And now that this moment’s said and done, now that they’ve unleashed what is potentially among the best albums of 2011, they’re asking the audience to move forward with them. To go with David, looking skyward and hopeful and into the morning. “Empty the theatre,” they scream. “Rush the door. Start living the life you never could before.”
