Review: Yuck - Yuck
The self-titled debut album by Yuck (featuring former members of noisy indie five-piece Cajun Dance Party) has sparked debates about originality and necessity for innovation in indie rock. So how about we just review the album?
Well, that’s kind of difficult. There’s no doubt the album has touchstones in late eighties/early nineties grunge and slacker rock — there’s a reason pretty much every piece of writing on the band invokes the names of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and/or Pavement — with its blissed-out fuzzy guitar riffs, recorded-in-a-tin-can-drums and barely-audible vocals.
But along with all these sound-a-like qualities that, if that’s all Yuck had, would give them the potential to be dismissed as a gimmick, the band have what made influences like Pavement (especially) unique; that ever-elusive, sometimes derided (by idiots) pop sensibility.
The album really is hook after hook, whether it takes the form of particularly melodic squall of guitar feedback or a sweet and catchy vocal.
That said, the appeal perhaps doesn’t stretch across a whole album — especially when we get to seven minute closer “Rubber”, which is a bit too much, or the too self-consciously ”rebellious” “Suicide Policeman” (a song title that borders on the satirical).
Otherwise, Yuck is a perfectly “nice”, catchy, well-written album. It wears its influences on its sleeve (the actual cover artwork would be better if it did so, actually — another slight criticism), but, who cares when the music’s so much fun?
7.7/10
Yuck is out on Mercury Records now
Notes
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