Despite opting for a band name that sounds like the sort of thing that Friedrich Nietzsche might have chosen had he made a run for the pop charts, “Oh Yeah” proves to be less intense and less gloomy than the makers’ maudlin moniker suggests.
Okay, I’m not saying that intensity and gloom are not found running through its sonic DNA, but so too is groove and intrigue, wit as well as wisdom, the poetic and the profound. And the result is a scuzzy, low-slung slice of pop-noir that vocally sounds like Andrew Eldritch doing his best Jacques Brel impression and sonically suggests The Gun Club playing it straight, less rockabilly, more demonic grunge-pop.
I love it. It’s weird and subversive, lyrically ahead of the game and musically plowing its own furrow through the musical landscape, even if said furrows run parallel to those left by the likes of Nick Cave and Swell Maps or Mission of Burma. (And if you are still spinning records by the last two, then we can definitely be friends.)
And even if I have, throughout this review, dropped names like a Fiat sheds engine parts —i.e., regularly and subtly —that is only because without them, this is a band difficult to place on the musical map.
In an ideal and creative world, shouldn’t all bands be this hard to pin down?
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