The much-loved band of the 90s and 00s US DIY scene have a new album out next month on Shelley’s Vampire Blues label
Anna Wood, May 9th, 2018
New York and San Francisco DIY band Fuck, who fell off the map more
than ten years ago, have reappeared with a whole new album - rather
unexpectedly and to the delight of Steve Shelley, who is releasing the
record on his own label.
“We’d been reissuing some of Fuck’s earlier stuff,” says the Sonic Youth drummer. “Including Baby Loves A Funny Bunny and Pretty… Slow on vinyl. And while working with them I discovered that they’d quietly finished an entire new LP. An entire new LP!”
Recorded all over the place and put together over several years, from
basic tracks in San Francisco to overdubs in Italy and mixing in
Memphis, the album is called The Band, due 22
June.
The first taste is a luxurious paean to the mundane, ‘Leave My Body,’with its dreamy video, inspired by the film Harvey and the stories of Raymond Carver.
“We played with Fuck a lot in the 90s and they were always miles
ahead of most of their contemporaries with their use of dynamics (!),
space ( ), silence (....),”
says Shelley.
“Then there were amours
in the past couple years that Fuck had some unheard new music, and odd
videos kept appearing online. Eventually I was able to hear this new
music, and now we’re releasing it – unexpected and welcome at the same
time.”
Presenting fuck’s first new record in
over ten years, on Vampire Blues!
In the mid-90s to early
aughts, fuck was releasing a new record every other year and touring
constantly while jumping from label to label.
Then, with nary a warning,
they up and disappeared.
No note, no nothing.
Skip
forward a generation and it’s revealed that they’ve been spending all
these years meticulously sculpting the most impressive album of their
career.
Recorded in fits and starts all over the map, from basic
tracks in San Francisco to overdubs in Italy and mixing in Memphis, the
band comes through with a surprisingly cohesive sound; though, like
their six previous studio albums, the genre-bending and boundary-pushing
song-writing continues.
Any lesser band
would have destroyed all sense of spontaneity going this route; not
fuck.
The casual off-the-cuff attitude remains, but now with added depth
and clarity.
