YUCK * YUCK
(Fat Possum Records)
Imagine this. The 7:10pm screening of Reality Bites has just concluded, and you & your flannel-clad friends are walking to the nearest pay phone so you can page your brother to pick you up in his Corsica and take you to Denny's, allowing you to discuss in detail the sex appeal of Jen Trynin vs. Juliana Hatfield over pot after pot of black coffee. Got it? Alright, now hold that thought.
It's hard to believe that a band could already be nostalgic about the 90s, but that's exactly Yuck's modus operandi. Their much anticipated debut album draws from the likes of Dinosaur Jr., Teenage Fanclub and essentially the entire Tank Girl soundtrack. Our introduction to the simply named band is filled with every sound we loved during the beginning of President Clinton's first term...and it's done without being kitschy, which is as impressive as it is catchy.
Yuck kicks off their first album with "Get Away," a track that wouldn't have been out of place on DGC Rarities V1 (the only volume, mind you). Filled with lush guitars, distorted vocals and the catchiness you'd expect to hear during a later afternoon set at Edgefest, the album begins with a figurative bang. It's a straightforward alt-pop track, and what follows is as no frills as this opener suggests. "Holing Out" & "Georgia" are filled with the perfect amount of fuzz, phaser and feedback you're accustomed to hearing bleed from a beat up Fender Jaguar.
It doesn't stop there, though. "Operation" screeches with purpose. "Sunday" could provide the ideal backdrop to a Rayanne overdose as Angela & Rickie desperately try to turn her life around. "Suicide Policeman" sounds like it influenced Love Spit Love, not the other way around. Song after song bursts with a kind of high school nostalgia. By the time we get to the grinding 7-minute finisher "Rubber," Yuck has nothing left to prove, yet they kick it up a notch, giving us an oozing, escalating epic that could best be dissected by Matt Pinfield.
Aside from a brief hiccup of purchasing an early Roxette cassette tape, this is the kind of music that pushed me to formulate my own opinions during my initial stages of musical self-discovery. I love everything about this album...and simply put, if you're a fan of Empire Records, OK Soda and Rax, you will, too.
Grade: A+
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