08.10.18

Fucked Up have always brimmed with ideas. The Canadian group’s eclectic tastes have often defied the catch-all term ‘punk’, packing in flute solos alongside furious screams. Fifth album Dose Your Dreams may be their most experimental effort to date.

Dose Your Dreams changes tack at every juncture. House of Keys is a doomy midpoint lament, which argues into the title track’s space-funk odyssey without coming off all Jamiroquai. The likes of The One I Want Will Come for Me and Came Down occupy an anthemic, Americana-esque world that The Hold Steady would be proud of. Gothic electro-rock also finds a place on Mechanical Bull and Accelerate, the latter even featuring a sonic nod to fellow hardcore-punk innovators Refused’s New Noise.

There are moments where Dose Your Dreams’ ambition dips, the record’s first third clogged up in narrative and a relatively forgettable run of less boundary-pushing numbers. Above all, though, it’s a record that proves Fucked Up are still guitar music’s greatest anything-goes innovators: punk in spirit, if not always in sound.

Tom Connick