The rock music of the 1990s has been raging back in recent months, and with it, new acts are cropping up that seem to be drawn to the era's frayed noise and hooky, guitar-driven melodies. Among the most promising of these bands is London's Yuck, whose members are too young to have experienced much of the decade's music firsthand. But, for a band of five 20-year-olds, it's remarkable how much Yuck has the '90s in its blood.
Through a series of seven-inch singles and a cassette-only EP, and especially on its self-titled debut, the band has fused the DNA of grunge, shoegaze and fuzzy garage pop into a sound that doesn't owe too much to any one of Yuck's likely influences. Yuck brims with guitars blasted from blown-out speakers, sweetly harmonized vocals and words that confess youthful love, angst and heartbreak.
The album's closer, "Rubber," is a throbbing vamp that opens with guitar distortion so thick and sludgy it hurts. As the song builds, feedback begins to overlap with, envelop and eventually wash over Daniel Blumberg's blissed-out vocals. Where many bands would simply cake on layers of noise with little purpose, "Rubber" uses pummeling, beautiful distortion as a way to create a slow but powerful crescendo that evokes both nostalgia and catharsis.
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