Dose Your Dreams

A record this willing to go the absolute distance to challenge expectations yet entertain and move so consistently should equally be heralded in such high regard [as Screamadelica], which in time, this will.

Fucked Up have created a masterpiece that pushes boundaries, takes risks and delivers huge rewards.

What could well be their best effort yet. ... We're taken on a journey through many different genres, concepts, voices and anthems (I Don't Wanna Live in This World Anymore) which all manage to work cohesively to create an unbelievably satisfying whole by the time of finale Joy Stops Time.

Dose Your Dreams creates a vividly realised world I love to visit. Once I press play, I feel compelled to see it through to the end. Other listeners will tackle it in chunks.

Dose Your Dreams feels like a fresh breath for the band. With all the heavy meta-survey of their most recent releases spit out, it sounds like the band is floating upwards, and perhaps just as importantly, having a lot of fun.

Fucked Up's latest pushes the boundaries of their sound far beyond what you would expect. Dose Your Dreams is by far the most over-the-top album the band have ever created and shows they aren't satisfied with pumping out subpar material or rehashing what they've done.

Fucked Up’s personal narrative draws an uncanny parallel with that of Dose Your Dreams. In creating a tale of dreaming big and clinging on to hope they are living out their own script, refusing to be bound or compromise in the creation of their art. The importance of dreams cannot be understated.

A reverberant, high-octane treatise on the transcendent power of love and loud music. [Dec 2018, p.94]

Lyrically and conceptually they are scattered, but instrumentally and vocally, there is an open-mindedness that rends you. Ironically, in an album that talks about dying, there is a never say die attitude that latches on and never lets go.

Dose attempts to go everywhere and do everything. Opener “None of Your Business Man” is classic Abraham ascendancy (and the perfect anthem to quit your job to). “Torch to Light” introduces the double LP’s first moment of psychedelia, a new-ish venture for the band that’s sprinkled throughout. Mascis’s contribution on “Came Down Wrong” is, unsurprisingly, fuzzy, lackadaisical indie rock. “Dose Your Dreams” is disco. “Two I’s Closed” is a Beatles ballad. “The One I Want Will Come for Me” recalls shoegaze-y Cure.

Vocal contributions from a slew of guests keep things unpredictable on a set which often feels like a multi-genre playlist. ... Time spent getting your head around this craziness is time well spent. [6 Oct 2018, p.55]

It's probably premature to call Dose Your Dreams Fucked Up's masterpiece, but most bands would be very lucky to make something this daring and accomplished once in their careers, let alone twice.

It’s powerfully confronting, unashamedly angry, unrelenting and it’s long. Yet throughout, the band’s mastery guides the album. The ebb and flow, often squeezed into the running time of a single track, is as beautiful as it is disarming.

There’s almost something for everyone on Dose Your Dreams, and, thankfully, that eclectic aspect to Fucked Up’s most ambitious project yet means it leans more towards opus than hopeless.

There's variety like never before: bludgeoning tech-punk, disco beats and Screamadelica-era Primal Scream eruptions. That it exists is exhausting; that it works is extraordinary. [Nov 2018, p.29]

Dose Your Dreams is fucking ace. [Oct 2018, p.85]

A sprawling, ambitious 18-track behemoth, its size and constant stylistic shifts belies its cohesiveness. [Nov 2018, p.106]

Despite Haliechuk and Falco’s bombastic concept, Dose Your Dreams functions similar to the recent hip-hop blockbusters that share its 82-minute length, best enjoyed in chunks or humming in the background between the singles.

Without Abraham’s consistent presence, Fucked Up’s music sounds almost conventional. Fortunately, Dose Your Dreams proves they’ve got a deep enough bag of tricks--including a towering throng of endless overdubs and genre detours that sound as massive as the band’s ambitions--to make even conventionality sound compelling.

Dose Your Dreams is a dizzying mix of styles, often within the same song.

It ultimately sounds like a radio stuck between two stations, a bit like the Hold Steady with laryngitis. Luckily there are enough musical diversions to keep it interesting.