Monday, July 3rd, 2017

Wolf Alice – Yuk Foo

Bot nad…


[Video]
[5.60]

Thomas Inskeep: Nasty dirty loud indie like only the UK can do it, on some srsly 1987 NME hype. We need more music like this, much more.
[8]

Alfred Soto: A blast of credible pop punk aggression, with a couple of safe landings woven with impressive clarity and skill despite its brevity.
[7]

Hannah Jocelyn: First reaction: When did Life Without Buildings get so aggressive? Even if it was off-putting on purpose, “Yuk Foo” is off-putting only for sounding so intense, yet initially coming across so dry. Further listens reveal little details like the way “shit” is looped, and the subversiveness of the lyrics that goes beyond cursing (“I have feelings, ’cause I’m a human/Totally self-destructive, constantly consuming”). It’s surprising to find little moments in a song that’s supposed to be as bratty as possible, but the details hint that Wolf Alice, who already have some solid music in their arsenal, have much more to offer.
[6]

Tim de Reuse: “You bore me/You bore me to death” is an intensely satisfying thing to yell in the exact way that it’s yelled here; the other refrains are comparatively staid (in particular, the line “I don’t give a shit” hits with half the impact that was probably intended). Even so, its production gives it delicious bite, and it’s exactly as short as it ought to be.
[7]

Will Rivitz: “You bore me to death,” screams the chorus, inadvertently describing this song. I’m pretty sure riot grrl is supposed to be dynamic and visceral, but this sounds less like a caterwauling punk tune from professional musicians and more like something the snotty fifteen-year-olds from down the street would make in their garage band before disbanding three months later because they realized nobody there really gave a shit about music in the first place. Ellie Rowsell yells like she’s just discovered swearing, Joff Oddie plays like he’s just discovered power chords, and everything comes together like Wolf Alice has just discovered punk by way of some Bikini Kill album in some alternate universe where Bikini Kill sucked. 
[2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Wolf Alice continue their ’90s tourism and land at what’s more or less a raucous Bikini Kill cut. There’s no doubt that Ellie Rowsell gives it her all but I want noisy music to be highly melodic or completely disorienting and this satisfies neither. The spoonerism tips you off though, huh.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: I still have no idea which ’90s alt-rock band Wolf Alice wants to be, and given that the record apparently isn’t much like this, neither do they. At least riot grrrl is almost always more promising than the Radio 2 adult contemporary “Bros” could have segued into. And since Wolf Alice are British I’ll ignore the fact that “deplore me” is not the lyrical direction you want to take your punk song in 2017.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: An uncompromising blast of punk fury! Oh, it’s called “Yuk Foo” and its chorus asks you to deplore them. Let’s call it a compromising blast of punk fury then. And it’s not really much of a blast, in fact it’s kind of tinny really. There’s enough snot to work with, but if you took away their rhyming dictionary and told them to try again, this song would benefit greatly.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: Every so often I hear these poor bands and I pity them. They’ve been forced to endlessly eat dinners of important records, festival rock, and NME thrice-recycled factoids again and again to the point they can’t tell the difference between what’s lining their cages and what’s getting cleaned up after they regurgitate it. It’s a mess of dull ideas of punky, rocky, distortion and “wild impulses” that have all the spontaneity of a bad actor timidly kicking over a table so it doesn’t accidentally break. I believe that they’re bored, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not talking about themselves.
[1]

Claire Biddles: In her novel about the artifice of female social identity, “Veronica,” Mary Gaitskill articulates something very specific about using songs as a kind of temporary personality: “I didn’t have the ambition to be an important person or a star. My ambition was to live like music… I remember people walking around like they were wrapped in an invisible gauze of songs, one running into the next.” Sometimes songs form us for a lifetime, but equally important are those that help us to define ourselves at a point in time, as we live inside them for three minutes, or three minutes on repeat for days on end. “Yuk Foo” came at a good time. I don’t feel strong or capable or able to tell anyone to fuck off at the moment, but if I live like “Yuk Foo,” I can at least try it on for two minutes. If I press play as I’m walking out of my bedroom with my headphones on, it’s timed perfectly so Ellie Rowsell’s vocals start as I push open the front door. The outside world hits as soon as the antidote kicks in.
[9]

Reader average: [8.33] (3 votes)

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5 Responses to “Wolf Alice – Yuk Foo”

  1. counterpoint: the music “the snotty fifteen-year-olds from down the street” would make is probably great

  2. another counterpoint: men’s view of wolf alice doesn’t really matter lol

  3. RT katherine and claire and also if you think of this song as a companion piece to You’re a Germ it makes it even better

  4. YES ASHLEY

  5. claire otm