The Year of the Tiger willl be burning bright, if Fucked Up’s 15-minute single of the same name is indication. Out today, the 2011-conquering Canadian rockers’ “Year of the Tiger” rings in the Chinese New Year on a predictably epic note, with a grandiose sprawl of growling, blazing, crunching over-the-topness. Hear it in the widget below, or if you have as much trouble as we did getting that to work, it’s also streaming unofficially on YouTube. It’s about a tiger!
Produced by Shane Stoneback during the sessions for SPIN’s No. 1 album of last year, David Comes to Life, the track combines Fucked Up’s familiar post-hardcore yawp with the type of droning art-rock chug you might expect from a single where the B-side, “ONNO,” is advertised as a “22-minute-long palindromic drone.” As promised, director Jim Jarmusch is here, intoning narration. So are synth-popper Austra and fellow Canadian Annie-Claude Deschênes of post-punks Duchess Says, though it’s less immediately clear who’s doing exactly what.
Fucked Up main man Damian Abraham, though, is front and center, recounting the majesty and the tragedy of tiger life over a propulsive rhythm section. Now and then touches of delicate piano pierce through the guitar-feedback squall — if you’re Abraham, you might even say they “cut through darkness like the shots from a hunter’s gun.” Eat some frosted flakes, and hear this mighty beast roar.
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