Fuck - Cupid's Cactus
(Smells Like)
It must be hard to be a "serious" band with a name like Fuck. With such
a name, you'd expect the band to have an irreverent sense of humor,
and the band certainly does, calling their new album Cupid's Cactus
and covering it with pictures of phallic-looking cacti. However, Fuck
is not a four-letter word like Ween; they are a "serious" band no matter
how many songs on this album involve "panties" or "monkey love." In fact,
Fuck was even hyped by their former label, Matador, as sort of a blue-collar,
renegade version of Yo La Tengo.
The label does fit, to a certain degree, as Fuck is very willing to
experiment with song structure and style as long as it stays within the
generic genre confines of pop and rock. Cupid's Cactus contains several such
experiments in style, whether it's the lazy country balladeering twinkle of
"Dandelion Ditch," the more Southwestern Calexico-like soundscape of
"San Jacinto," the early-Pavement-like fuzz-pop of "Never Alone" or
"Glass Charms," the odd minimalist jazz (with upright bass and sine waves) of
"How Do You Do. Mr Do," the finger-snapping sidewalk pop of "It's Unbelievable,"
the Southern rock boogie "Oshun," or the New Year-like slowcore-gone-rock of
"Awright."
All this style-hopping does not make Cupid's Cactus disjointed. In fact,
this album may be Fuck's most cohesive as it is all
kept together by a similar, slow tempo. Fuck was often slow in the past,
but almost all of this, their 5th album, is at a lazy, late night pace. While
there is certainly nothing wrong with pop songs like "Fuck Motel," Fuck is
equally adept at keeping things slow, and the band still finds room to fit
their requisite number of hooks (like the vocals "It's unbelievable so I won't
believe it at all" and "She never said to me 'I'll drink to that'") and
a few of their quirky sounds (including an elephant tooting his horn
and a baby gurgling noises before finally saying "Momma").
The batch of songs on Cupid's Cactus is the band's best to date except for
the slightly better Pardon My French (the band's third album which features
the aforementioned "Motel").
Like Yo La Tengo, Fuck is not remarkable in how they break boundaries or create
new ideas through these experiments in style, but rather how each experiment
seems to come off without a hitch, each song working wonderfully. Fuck is
seemingly able to be successful in anything they try; it's just a matter of
what they feel like trying.
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