Yuck - Yuck

You know Nirvana, right? You've heard Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth? You have a Teenage Fanclub album or two in your collection? You might even call yourself a Guided By Voices fan. Or maybe Jesus & Mary Chain?

Yes? Then you probably don't need Yuck's self-titled debut album at all. Because everything you'll find here has been done before, and better by those groups.

That said though, there are things to like about this London-based group, provided you're able to listen to the songs on their own merits, and not just hear them as echoes of some greater past.



High Points

Get Away opens on a good note, with a wandering guitar riff, and fuzzed up, almost indecipherable vocals driving a raucous three and a half minutes of joyous rock action. But then The Wall immediately spoils it with its arch, and annoyingly cutesy nonsense lyrics. You'll be singing it all day, but you'll hate yourself for doing so.

Holing Out is the next highlight, not so much all-out-rocking as Get Away, it uses the old loud-quiet-REALLYLOUD dynamic for maximum impact when the big, howling guitar pay-off does arrive. It was a great choice for the first single, and has no doubt been responsible for much of the hype around this debut.

Then there's Sunday, which could have been an off-cut from Bandwagonesque, and is as good as anything on Yuck. It showcases the band's ability to pull off the quieter stuff (better to forget Suck or Suicide Policeman on the same note, though), full of blissed out melodies and subdued vocals.

The Verdict

Tough one. Yuck remind me of groups like Feeder and Ash, when they were plugging away making scuzzy, loud pop-rock in the post-grunge era, because they are essentially flogging the same dead horse here.

They do so more successfully it must be said, not straying so far from the original source material, but in the end it's the all-too-faithful recreation of their forebears' sound that makes this release less exciting than maybe it should be.

Final Score: 64%