Yuck - Yuck

Imagine receiving a gift, go on, picture it in your mind. You sit down in a comfy chair, hold it on your lap and then, slowly, begin to unwrap. Pulling off the fancy ribbon and then peeling back the paper, before opening up the box itself.

Then, inside, imagine discovering odds and ends from all the best alternative music from the past 25 years.

There's the arms and legs of Pavement, the heart of Dinosaur Jr, the brain of Sonic Youth, the lungs of Teenage Fanclub and the soul of The Lemonheads, all collected into a disjointed bundle just bursting to fly free. Bubbling with excitement and anticipation and just waiting to be put together. Waiting for a host to rescue them. Enter a four piece band from Shoreditch, London, called, rather inappropriately, Yuck.

Climbing from the ruins of the much talked about, but extremely short lived, Cajun Dance Party, who's fire extinguished after one album in 2008 under the weight of unreasonable expectations. 20-year-old's Daniel Blumberg and Max Bloom, after a three year hiatus licking their wounds and discovering the music of the 80's post hardcore scene, decided to have another stab at the one thing that they love.

Recruiting drummer Jonny Rogoff, after a chance meeting in, of all places, a kibbutz, and Hiroshima-born bassist Mariko Doi, they hit the road with their bright and shiny new band. Signed to Fat Possum records, the label of American heavyweights Band of Horses, Yuck have delivered an album that is so in debt to the scene unbeknown to them until a few years ago that you find yourself checking the CD that you are listening to to make sure you've the right one and not some 'Best of Alternate America' (if it exists) album.

I say this like its a bad thing, and for that I apologise, because its not! Its a wonderful thing. Its a wonderful thing to find young talent cutting their teeth making music that doesn't bow down to the gods that are the money men with their hellish throw-away music for a quick buck.

Sorry...rant over...back to the review.

From the opening track 'Get Away' with its Dinosaur Jr-esque squall to the dark feedback of 'Operation' evoking memories of Sonic Youths 'Teenage Riot' and the albums highlight, the beautiful Shook Down with its gorgeous harmonies sounding like a lost Teenage Fanclub track, these young upstarts have created a record that reaches the neglected parts of the brain like no other band do.

And it continues through all of the twelve tracks. Skewing from loud distorted guitars and and belting solos (The Wall and Holing Out) to the sparse and hypnotic (Stutter and Rose Gives a Lilly) to make an album that is, to this reviewer anyway, damn near perfect!

The band themselves claim their true influences to be Sparklehorse and Red House Painters, so we can hopefully expect a lot more emotionally oblique, cunning, layered angles to Yuck’s music. Just as long as they don’t get rid of their ability to hit so many of rock’s sweet spots, they’ll be just fine.