FUCKED UP

Mike Haliechuk: “We’re still making weird shit”

“This is a record made from our community and our friendships,” says Mike Haliechuk, guitarist and primary songwriter with Fucked Up. The Toronto punks’ latest collection is also highly ambitious – an 80-minute rock-opera featuring contributions from Miya Folick, Lido Pimienta, J Mascis and string arrangements by Owen Pallett. But, four years on from their last effort, it also represents a labour of love. Bandmates Haliechuk and Jonah Falco started work on it in 2016, before the former took a year off “to write a 100-page prose poem until I thought of an idea for the narrative”.

The result, Dose Your Dreams, is never short of enthralling. It was never meant to be this way. Fifteen years since their inception, Fucked Up – a hardcore band known for their combustible dynamic – are making their most enterprising music. “Despite the stuff we’ve said about not getting along, we all have loved each other enough to keep this going,” Haliechuk remarks. “It started as a reaction. We’ve always been the underdogs. We’ve all maintained the grim determination to make Fucked Up exist for as long as it could. The fact that we’re still making such weird shit is just a bonus.”