By Stewart Allan of
Black International
The debut album by Sheffield quartet Kimmy Yeah is a tricky beast. Trying to get a grip on their twisting, writhing songs is like mud-wrestling an eel. Punk sea shanties laced with pump organ interludes and tumbling drums are intercut with ferocious guitars, shifting time signatures and skin-tight riffs.
The band has a bit of a reputation for being “weird”, an allegation which, whilst not completely without foundation, is a slightly lazy one. Rather than being deliberately obtuse, I think they’re just very playful, their songs bursting with ideas like a bag of popcorn in a microwave.
As I say, the band are difficult to pin down for long, but common Transatlantic touchstones like Hüsker Dü, Fugazi and NoMeansNo are identifiable in places, along with some of the more progressive bands in the hardcore spectrum.
These influences are tempered however by a large dose of British whimsy and tongue-in-cheekiness, which suggests they don’t take themselves too seriously. Imagine Mclusky rewriting 'The Gift' by the Velvet Underground, and you'll get a faint idea of what 'Eat' sounds like. ‘Sticklebricks’ contains the aforementioned hardcore elements, but is peppered with three vocalists alternately harmonising and screaming across one another, a device that crops up in quite a few songs, notably ‘Steamship’ and the frantic ‘Biketheft’.
Kimmy Yeah are a band that work especially well in a live environment; having seen them play a couple of times I can see how capturing their onstage energy on a recording may have proved difficult- guitarist/keyboard player Simon leaps around like a satyr, firing off sparks of distorted piano and ragged-edged folk trills with demonic glee. Bassist Tom seems to spend most of their set with a large grin on his face as he screams his way through his lines. Thankfully, their live dynamic seems pretty much intact here, with some of the quieter interludes filling the same role a tale told whilst changing a broken string or an impromptu rendition of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ might do.
The album blasts through eleven tracks in approximately 26 minutes, and while some songs may have benefitted from some more space to stretch out, that's a fairly minor grumble. It’s generally better to be economical with these things, in my personal opinion; given the fact that most of us are gradually developing the attention spans of budgerigars it’s probably a good length for a long player, even if many bands still put out longer EPs.
My recommendation would be to set aside an hour, stick it on loop and inhale it three or four times in succession. Or should I say tethera methera? Look it up…
