Nothing is simple in the world of Fucked Up… thankfully so. Released as the precursor to the massive Dose Your Dreams album, “High Rise” was issued on “Dream’s Day,” June 15, 2018, which non-coincidentally was exactly two years from the date the band started recording the new album. To twist it even further, the A-Side is a cover of a relatively obscure 1979 record by The Trainspotters, but the B-side is a “cover” of Jade Hairpins… a band that seemingly didn’t exist until just now.

Frankly, it’s all pretty fun and points out that with all the tortured and veiled history of Fucked Up, we’re missing one of their big aspects- they like to have fun. Dose Your Dreams finds our hero David Eliade zapped backed to the late ‘70s or early ‘80s, so it’s fun to have the band fittingly cover a track from that era. The original as a punk bopper that was as much power-pop as it was punk rock, and Fucked Up play it straight more or less. Singer Damian Abrahams unique growl gives that track somewhat of a harder strike, but even he interjects some whimsy into his delivery while the rest of the band bounces through the track, which to be fair, acts as sort of a “20 Flight Rock” remake. Recent Fucked Up records like Year of the Hare and This Mother Forever find the band going for the cosmic and heavy expanse. “High Rise” counters that the band has a great deal of melody and energy underneath it all and by seeing an inspiration directly, we realize that Fucked Up is a coin of many sides. When you look at the face, that’s all you see, but turn it over, and there’s a whole other picture to be seen.

And that’s where “Tower on Time” comes in. Drummer Jonah Falco takes the vocals here and it’s a decidedly more electronic affair. The recording pulls from techno music, am pop, and ‘80s rock, resulting in something not dissimilar to mid-period Cure. It goes to show at how adept the band is at mimicking other styles as well as pulling from those styles to create something new. Whereas the A-side found the band looking back, the B-side finds them pushing forward into new territories for them. Being that Dose Your Dream follows a guy warping back and forth through time, a record that you can flip over for old or new tracks serves as more than a fitting harbinger. And like a coin, you can only see one side of a record at a time. But, if you spend all your time on onside, you’re not even getting half of the full picture.