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Yuck

Related Artists - Arctic Monkeys, Come
Related Genres - Alternative

Yuck 6 ( 2011 )
Get Away / The Wall / Shook Down / Holing Out / Suicide Policeman / Georgia / Suck / Stutter / Operation / Sunday / Rose Gives A Lilly / Rubber

London four-piece Yuck clearly love the early, pre-britpop nineties - particularly the American bands that were around pre Nirvana, making it big. Think Dinosaur Jr in particular. Some other tracks sound like the band should have waited a bit longer before releasing a debut album, as the quality of material is extremely variable throughout. Peter Buck from REM recently said something that really resonates with me, you can get away with sound, newness and surprise for your first couple of albums but after that you've really got to learn how to write songs. 'Georgia' for instance is a Cure riff coated in a hell of a lot of fuzz and distortion whilst a lo-fi vocal weaves in and out, shoegaze style. It's not unattractive, yet all the elements are obvious to guess and the song doesn't really go anywhere after that initial borrowed Cure riff comes in. 'Holing Out' is another track that relies seemingly alone on a fuzzed up guitar riff and again, indistinct and characterless vocals float in and out. Again, it's not so much a song as a single guitar riff, although half-way through we do get an enjoyable guitar solo of sorts that Dinosaur Jr would be proud of. 'Sunday' is seemingly an attempt at writing a proper song, it's softer, relies far less of distortion or sounding like Sebadoh and is a fairly decent track. Single 'Get Away' has received daytime radio-play and sounds like a classic Dinosaur Jr track and it also showcases the bass guitar man, good bass melodies and deepness here. 'Tell me when the pain kicks in' before a life-affirming at an indie-disco chorus, wonderful stuff.

Other songs flow past without really registering, merely being agreeable, standard indie-fare that would have been left in a garage circa 1993 because so much better was being produced elsewhere. Who is cooler, Motorhead or Yuck, that's what the likes of NME should be asking. Motorhead recently released a special acoustic, slowed down version of 'Ace Of Spades'. If your songs can't survive a single acoustic guitar+vocal in someone's living room or by a busker interpretation, it ain't worth shit. 'Suck' therefore sucks, it doesn't have a tune. 'Operation' could be done by anyone with a guitar pedal and Yuck, quite simply, have released an album far too soon. A good EP could be made out of this but that's not nearly enough.

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