Fucked Up's Year of the Horse - Side A Released

For the past two-plus years, I’ve been working with Mike Haliechuk, from the Canadian hardcore band Fucked Up, on a screenplay called Perceval. I originally started working on this with Mike when his idea was that his band’s next EP in their Zodiac series, Year of the Horse, would be an opera that I’d contribute some libretto for.

A lot of the music was already written, so sort of new for me, but the music Mike and his bandmate Jonah Falco were creating in the studio was very cool, so I was all-in on working with them again. I met the FU boys during our 2014 collaboration with Tapestry Opera called Tap Ex: Metallurgy where composer Ivan Barbotin and myself worked with Mike and Jonah to create these sort of experimental mini-operas that brought together disparate forms.

2014. Tap:Ex Metallurgy

Somewhere along the line, Perceval went from opera to western-ballet-opera-on-screen. A lot of that has to do with support from Todd Brown at Rawk Moving Pictures who scored us some Harold Greenburg Funding and continues to promote the screenplay — no easy feat at the best of times, and even more of a task during a pandemic. While Mike and I were writing the screenplay, Fucked Up was in the studio recording the album, the story of which appears in the lyrics.

Well, the album is done and Fucked Up is releasing the four sides of Year of the Horse over the next months.

Curtains open

So listen to Side A on Bandcamp here and buy the thing. Future sides forthcoming.

And download the libretto and artwork here or on Genius Lyrics website.

Blanche, one of the heroes from A Year of the Horse (Whose Name Was Perceval). Artwork by Nadia C Tan.