Fucked Up - Couple Tracks: Singles 2002-2009

As some kind of ‘best of’ battering ram, they don’t come much harder than Fucked Up. Couple Tracks comprises 25 tracks of rare, unreleased and alternate takes on the history so far of a band fast becoming the cemented epitome of punk rock.

You might expect to find amongst this collection a wealth of unrelenting, fast-paced and exhilaratingly bile-fuelled numbers, which is ‘Toronto FC’ in a nutshell: what surprises, however, is just how melodic they are beneath the presence of their enigmatic frontman, Damian ‘Pink Eyes’ Abraham.

There’s an almost psych-rock echo in the under-water vocal of ‘David Comes To Life’, scaling the heights of the guitar neck for ‘Dangerous Fumes’ and some noisy experimentalism to get Ciccone Youth salivating over in ‘Last Man Standing’.

Thrift-store scavengers will rejoice at the inclusion of yin-yang rarities ‘I Don’t Wanna Be Friends With You’ and the ever so romantic (but no less ear pummelling) ‘Dream Come True’ – both of which were given away at shows in their hometown some 4 years past. Latterly, the double LP takes in alternate versions of highlights ‘No Epiphany’ and ‘Magic Word’ from sessions for the masterpiece album, The Chemistry of Common Life, back in 2008/09.

Helpfully divided into discs referred to as “The Hard Stuff” and “The Fun Stuff” respectively, it’s an even-handed view of the band’s split personality, where shouting doesn’t necessarily indicate anger: well, with the exception of ‘I Hate Summer’ perhaps. Tackling both big boys politics of the Spanish Civil War in their first ever single ‘No Pasaran’, alongside the dumb-fun homoeroticism of ‘He’s So Frisky’, we’re hard-pressed to come up with a band who sound so offensive and yet so lovable.

The full release boasts extensive liner notes on each of the singles herein, which will no doubt prove enlightening to the hardcore fan-base who were unlucky enough to miss out on the original 7”s. But lest we forget that this is a history still very much in the process of evolving and, as such, the reality is that all you need to do is catch them live. In the process, you run the gauntlet of your life being in Pink Eyes’ hands.