With almost the entire country sweltering in the heat, Seattle’s about the only place where an outdoor music festival sounds appealing this time of year--if it doesn’t rain that is. Fortunately, this rainier-than-usual Seattle summer dispensed with the gray skies for the opening day of the Capitol Hill Block Party on July 22, 2011. Sunny and 75, it was perfect festival weather, allowing for active enjoyment rather than grueling endurance.
Of all the buzz bands on Friday’s schedule of 30 bands on five stages (stretched along Pike Street) — from local folkies The Head and the Heart to New York pop duo Cults — it was Toronto’s hardcore punk band Fucked Up that stood head and shoulders above everybody else. I write this is as a music fan who is disinterested at best in hardcore music, and one who was only nominally aware of the band, despite their Polaris Award-winning buzzworthiness.
All that changed when I stepped in for Fucked Up’s short on-the-air radio session hosted by Seattle’s fantastic KEXP, and immediately thereafter rearranged my schedule so I could see them again later at their main set, where the sardine-packed fans inside club Neumos went nuts.
Just looking at the band, it’s a little difficult to ascertain the kind of music they play. There’s a mash-up of polos, Ray-Bans and country club haircuts in the backing band with the massive, shirtless stage presence of frontman Damian Abraham (or Pink Eyes). The music is similarly dichotomous, with dream-pop backing vocals and shimmering guitars lorded over by Abraham’s snarling hardcore singing.
It all comes together in a crazily entertaining way, and even if you don’t connect with the music, it’d be hard not to enjoy everything else about it. Besides the obvious reasons, hardcore music can be off-putting because its practitioners seem to take themselves so seriously, but there’s no worrying about that with Fucked Up.
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