F**Ked up reach an artistic pinnacle

F-KED UP “DOSE YOUR DREAMS” (ARTS AND CRAFTS)

The band with the name that almost guaranteed them a niche audience has somehow become one of the most venerable rock groups in the country, and their new album is easily an artistic pinnacle in their wide-ranging career.

F-ked Up are a Toronto sextet who started out as anticorporate hardcore punk kids, with singer Damian Abraham barking like a deathmetal screamer. With 2008’s “The Chemistry of Common Life,” they landed the Polaris Music Prize, international success, and opening slots for everyone from Arcade Fire to Foo Fighters. They wrote album-length rock operas. They worked with a wide variety of guests, from Gord Downie to Owen Pallett to Jennifer Castle to J Mascis and Kurt Vile. Here, they add Mary Margaret O’Hara and Lido Pimienta to the mix. They became pillars of their local music community, promoting a wildly eclectic music series called “Long Winter,” which represented the best of both what Toronto is and what Toronto could be.

And yet: for all their ambition and critical acclaim, the records fell flat, to this critic’s ears: the production oddly muted for such a ferocious live act, Abraham’s amelodic monotonous vocals wearing thin quickly, the band’s prog tendencies clashing with their core strength as a straightup punk act best consumed in small doses. My opinion was a minority among my peers, but even Abraham himself was musing aloud about how long his band could last.

“Dose Your Dreams” is a game-changer. It is here that everything this band has worked toward comes to fruition. The production is crisp: the layers of guitars no longer muddied, the drums thunderous, the myriad extra layers expertly woven throughout. The arrangements are more creative than ever, employing atmospheric textures and harsh electronics, as well as Jane Fair’s saxophone and Owen Pallett’s strings. Most important: this record is where F-ked Up find an actual groove, as on the slinky disco of the title track (which owes debts to the Stone Roses), or the midtempo Springsteenian rocker “I Don’t Wanna Live In This World Anymore,” or the lilting shoegaze wash of “How to Die Happy,” or the Eno-esque weirdness of “Two I’s Closed.” There’s even a Skinny Puppy influence on the back-to-back electronic detour “Mechanical Bull” and “Accelerate.” Abraham surrenders more lead vocals than he ever has before, and the album is better for it — especially on the duet between Jennifer Castle and J Mascis on “Came Down Wrong.” Meanwhile, the traditional punk tracks (“House of Keys,” “Living in a Simulation”) are visceral, raw and anthemic fist-pumpers; some things never change, and, in fact, even get better.

Credit here goes to guitarist Mike Haliechuk and drummer J. Falco, who seized the creative helm at a time when the band wasn’t sure they would even make another record. This is beyond a doubt their “London Calling,” their “Zen Arcade” (there’s more than a bit of Hüsker Dü throughout this album), their “The Suburbs.” Ten years from now, we’ll be talking about some new young band in a fit of creativity who will have made their own “Dose Your Dreams.”

Stream: “Raise Your Voice Joyce,” “Dose Your Dreams,” “Came Down Wrong”

STEVE PERRY “TRACES” (SONY)

The new Steve Perry album opens with the line, “I know it’s been a long time coming, since I last saw your face.”

Yes, that Steve Perry, the former singer of Journey, who sold a bajillion records and was one of the biggest bands of the ’80s. Journey broke up in 1987, largely because Perry had burned himself out — not physically, or due to drugs, but from pure emotional exhaustion. There was a solo album and a reunion album in 1997, followed by a brief tour, and then Perry essentially went into hiding.

Meanwhile, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” — which wasn’t even the band’s biggest top-40 hit back in the day (that would be “Open Arms”) — became a cultural meme in the 2000s, starting with a key moment in Patty Jenkins’s 2003 movie “Monster,” followed by its use in the 2007 closing sequence of “The Sopranos, and in a 2009 episode of “Glee.” Perry was silent during all of that; Journey went back on the road with a singer they found in a Filipino cover band, who also sang the song at the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.

“Traces” is a low-key return for Perry. There are no stadium anthems here, no bids for pop success. It’s an intensely personal record, about meeting and losing the love of his life to breast cancer after only a year, in 2011-12. (Read September’s New York Times profile of Perry for more details.) His voice is only slightly worse for wear; he still hits those soaring, high notes, but there’s a depth of emotion there that wasn’t always evident in those noteperfect hit performances of his youth. Whether it marks a return to the game or not, or just a cap to a career, doesn’t even matter. It’s a testament to the power of music as a healer.

Stream: “No Erasin’,” “Easy to Love,” “We Fly”