Review: Yuck – S/T
Yuck – S/T (2011) [Fat Possum] // Grade: A-
“Get Away,” the opening track on London band Yuck’s debut album, starts with a guitar hook so good that you instantly realize “shit, this whole CD is going to be catchy as all hell.” It’s a musical promise that, luckily, is delivered on. I have every confidence that Yuck will become one of the years biggest buzz bands. Thankfully, they also seem to have to have the musical chops to survive that bittersweet distinction. They also possess a sound that isn’t inherently tied to “right now”.
The UK has long been the place you can always go to get good old fashioned guitar rock, and in a musical landscape where every genre seems to have been infected by electro, Yuck is happily free of those glitchy embellishments. That’s not to say, however, that they aren’t ambitious in their scope. Many of their bigger songs reminded me of some of my favorite pop music from the nineties. All full of big brash hooks, clear guitar lines, and a theatricality that’s free of irony. This works to great effect, but could become tiresome over the length of a whole album. Luckily, Yuck is balanced out with forays into many different styles of “rock.” “Suicide Policeman” and “Suck” are both romantically inclined girl-boy singalongs who’s lovelorn lyricism reminded of Stars‘ better moments. “The Wall” and “Operation” are high octane rockers where singer Daniel Blumberg straps on his talkbox and does his best teenage screech. I was especially impressed with the way Yuck chooses to end the album.
“Rose Gives A Lilly” is an out-of-left-field acoustic jam that highlights the band’s talent even without their singers considerable contribution. I figured it for an experimental interlude that would lead into a final track sort of summing up the album as a whole. But instead, “Rubber” takes the album in a whole different direction. It’s a shoegaze indebted reverb filled 7 minute assault of a closer, devolving into walls of fuzz and screams. I guess they were trying to show that, despite what they showed over all of Yuck, you haven’t even heard where they can go. Color me impressed.
