Photo by Lindsay Duncan
Nearly twenty years after its humble beginning, the journey of FUCKED UP’s ever-evolving Zodiac series begins its towering conclusion with Grass Can Move Stones, a monumental ten-part finale set to a meticulously crafted text beginning with the album Year Of The Goat, set for physical release this Friday, December 12th.
Four-and-a-half-years on from their last entry Year Of The Horse, Grass Can Move Stones will encompass the final three entries into the series; Goat, Monkey, and Rooster, telling one connected story over three albums, an almost five-hour musical voyage through their varied styles and influences, that will revisit and recontextualize elements from the previous nine zodiac entries in ingenious and limitlessly imaginative ways.
The ten sides of music will be released serially over the course of a year starting with Year Of The Goat, Year Of The Monkey in Spring 2026, and concluding with Year Of The Rooster in Autumn, the last entry of which will coincide with the 20th anniversary of Year Of The Dog in October 2026. Each entry will debut on the FUCKED UP Bandcamp, followed by a vinyl release on Tankcrimes, the longstanding home of FUCKED UP’s Zodiac releases.
Issued the band, “We are excited to announce Grass Can Move Stones, the ten part finale to our twenty-year Zodiac album cycle. Join us over the next year as we release the Year Of The Goat LP, the Year Of The Monkey 2xLP, and the Year Of The Rooster 2xLP in installments, one story spread over almost five hours of music, that dives back into the characters, narratives, and music from all our previous zodiac records, told by dozens of characters and special guests.”
Stream FUCKED UP’s Year Of The Goat in its stunning entirety HERE.
Year Of The Goat is available on vinyl in the following color variants:
Aqua Vinyl (Ltd. 500)
Marbled Green Goat (Ltd. 250 – Tankcrimes Exclusive) ** Sold Out! **
White Vinyl (Ltd. 600 – Retail Exclusive)
Gold (Ltd. 400 – FUCKED UP Exclusive)
Find preorders via Tankcrimes HERE.
Year Of The Goat Track Listing:
Side A: Long Ago Gardens
Side B: Rivers And Lakes
Grass Can Move Stones tells the story of Monkey and Good Goat, two young friends who embark on a journey of self-discovery, encountering gods, magical creatures, and dangers along the way, loosely following the narrative of the fundamental Journey to the West, written in the 16th century by Wu Cheng’en. The story also charts the career of the band, whose search for a musical home has led them through a varied and complex discography over their twenty-five years as a band.
As a text, the lyrics which make up the tale of Grass Can Move Stones are an enormous lattice work of philosophy, literature, and benevolent self-mythology taking the reader through the life and times of FUCKED UP via an expansive, fantastical open-world of dream like canyons, meadows, clifftops, and lakes; hellish encounters with enormous beasts, and uplifting moments of reverence and humility.
Compositionally, Grass Can Move Stones, is ambitious in its scale and in its execution. Goat, Monkey, and Rooster are thoroughly composed operatic suites of music which develop their thematics alongside the text and action of the story while cataloguing and reimagining twenty years of musical material from the existing Zodiac releases. The music mirrors the words and the words mirror the music.
Tuka Mohammed (featured on Year Of The Horse) returns to center stage with FUCKED UP, voicing “Good Goat” throughout Grass Can Move Stones. She and Damian Abraham (the voice of Monkey) share the duty of making this journey on our behalf so we can gaze into the world in which the band, former guest vocalists from Year Of The Pig, Ox, Tiger, Hare, Snake, and entirely new voices will fill out the cast of characters. Goat will feature Jennifer Castle, Tamara Lindeman (The Weather Station), and Dwid Hellion (Integrity) as its central guests.
This is FUCKED UP’s most ambitious work to date, a cinematic gesture of sound which relies not on the standard practice of “genre-pushing” or traditional mimicry but developing a musical language within familiar sounds that lives exclusively in the narrative universe of this great story. Central to the sound, though, is the always colossal weight of the five original members of the band firing in tandem to produce big music in new ways.
The production of Grass Can Move Stones spanned nearly ten different studios, six years of development, and a large cast of guests to compile the necessary weight to complete this release. The result is like being dragged through the Cosmos by Metallica, Carcass, Spiritualized, Iron Age, Poison Idea, and L7.
“The clear stream is immeasurably deep.”
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