One Day

Album review

Since making their breakthrough with The Chemistry of Common Life in 2008, Fucked Up have so firmly established themselves as one of the most stylistically ambitious bands in punk that it seemingly goes against their nature to think small. For 2023's One Day, though, they decided to give themselves a challenge by reining themselves in -- true to its title, each member of the band wrote and recorded their contributions to the album within the space of 24 hours. Since the COVID-19 pandemic forced the musicians to record their parts remotely, this doesn't mean Fucked Up rolled into the studio with nothing and 24 hours later left with an album; however, after guitarist Mike Haliechuk came up with the melodies and laid down his tracks in the course of three eight-hour sessions, the rest of the band were instructed to follow suit. If nothing else, One Day does play as an experiment in "first thought, best thought" for a group whose instincts have leaned toward the operatic for the past decade and a half. If Fucked Up hadn't advertised the fact this was created under such a tight, self-imposed deadline, many would not have been likely to have guessed it. This is compact by their standards, featuring ten tracks in a mere 40 minutes (making it their shortest album to date), but the songs are as full-bodied and anthemic as ever. Although it lacks the genre-hopping unpredictability of 2018's Dose Your Dreams and 2021's Year of the Horse, this music -- which splits the difference between punk rock crunch and classic rock sweep -- sounds as muscular and joyously defiant as the band's reputation would suggest. Meanwhile, the lyrics, contemplating the failings of history and the place of the individual in a chaotic and unjust world, are literate and clearly the work of a group whose collective conscience is as powerful as their music. One Day is brimming with energy and the barely contained desire to be heard over the shouting of those around them; it's as viscerally effective as anything Fucked Up have ever recorded and smart enough to speak to the mind as well as the heart. If this is what the band can do in just one day, imagine what they could have done if they'd given themselves a week.
© Mark Deming /TiVo