Pitchfork

From the first listen, the new post-hardcore album from Fucked Up-- their first for Matador-- is a pummeling, almost exhausting listen. Yet it's also incredibly inclusive and uplifting, an ambitious hard rock record born out of a sense of community and the hope of creating something huge. Vivian Girls and Sebastian Grainger (formerly from Death From Above 1979) guest.

Phil Elverum finds a perfect foil and vessel for his songs in Julie Doiron on this mini-album, which marries to great effect his meditations on life's Big Questions with her quiet revelations about the everyday. To hear Elverum sing of his existential quandaries in isolation is frequently compelling, but with these songs often cast as duets, we're presented with the notion that Phil's struggles are universal.