YUZE BOYS-DEMO TAPE

YUZE BOYS 

DEMO TAPE

RELEASED ON GNARLY AS I WANNA BE RECORDS

I promise I'm not just going to review my friends on here. But sometimes your friends release really good music.

Yuze Boys are a fairly new band in Columbus, but they've all been around the proverbial block.  Alex Mussawir the singer was/is in an exceptional band called Goners, Jeff Kleinman the guitarist has been in too many bands for me to list, so we'll just list Nervosas for now. Winston Hightower, drummer, plays in a band called Splashin' Safari and bassist Kyle Bergamo was in bands Checkmate and Making Friends.

They recently released a 6-song EP on cassette through Gnarly As I Wanna Be Records. 

Sonically, it sounds like a forgotten 80's punk band's self-recorded release. Like some band that would have been playing with the Adolescents in '81 in California. Like a band that would have one of your favorite songs in a Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack. It's great. The first two songs, "Nothing 2 Give" and "Recurring Dreams" are both weirdo hardcore punk rippers. In "Recurring Dreams" Mussawir poses  his disaffected thought in an even more disaffected tone:

ever feel like there are two tv screens

like where your eyes used to be?

and all you can see are the same things on repeat

like movie screens playing endlessly

like recurring dreams

The third track is a significant change, and my favorite song on the release, I think. "Picking Sides" is the most melodic track here. Kleinman is hammering away through a catchy as hell progression, Hightower is keeping rhythm by mashing away at his piccolo snare, Bergamo is coolly dancing around on a upper fret bass line, and Mussawir is staring into your eyes (figuratively) and gushing out his warped worldview.

Mussawir, (Aaron Watkins photobomb), Kleinman, Hightower, Bergamo

The fourth track "Negative Thought Process" is a really cool song too. Reminds me of some '78 post punk stuff, with the 16th note hi hat beat intro, but gets significantly more aggressive, like Swell Maps meets Naked Raygun with the singer of Iceage fronting the band or something. Like with every other song on the release, Mussawir creates an interesting perspective through his observational lyrics.

this is my brain folding in on itself

Look! I have no use for it now

it's so dull!

 "Mexican Supermarket" is a cool song, an atmospheric David Lynch movie scene-esque vignette track. The last song,"Any Parties/Time Stands Still" is a hazy and nightmarish sequence, led by Bergamo's warped bass lines but bursting into fits of truculence. 

Go check this tape out and check out the band themselves if you're in Columbus or they perform near you. They're also awesome folks.

Just don't ever eat salsa or bananas in front of Jeff Kleinman.

SMUT-PURSE EP

SMUT-PURSE EP

"I want to believe"

This band is cool. They've really nailed down their aesthetic. I love the X-Files obsession, the weird VHS horror movie art, the heavy chorus and the riot grrrl influence-- and not to mention, all these kids just look cool. I'd give Andrew Glover, their guitar player, the "coolest looking dude of the year" award. Ha. 

Anyway, moving on. This EP. It was recorded, mixed, and mastered by John Hoffman, my good friend/roommate/bandmate. It sounds great. The intro track, "Shalom Harlow," opens with some ethereal noise and singer Taylor Roebuck speaking rather ominously--

i saw the light from the neighbors house 
go off just seconds 
before the dawn 
drops of fuel had drenched 
their fresh cut lawn 
i stepped out in it anyway let it 
soak in my socks 
when the moment was over i 
turned their light back on 

--

Then the song erupts into an aggressive as hell swathe of Nirvana-esque thrashing and Roebuck curling her lip and scaring the hell out of you. It's tight-- a perfect opener for the EP.

My favorite track is the third one, "Hysterectomy." It's got a nice Slowdive feel instrumentally, but with Roebuck's bitter rage scathing it's way in and sort of scaring you into this nightmarish state. It's atmospheric but the songwriting is there--something most bands of the genre don't quite nail down.

The last song on the album, "Mulder's Daydream," is solid as hell also. Definitely sounds like something from Rather Ripped or Daydream Nation. Even has some Gordon/Moore style harmonies going on. 

Very excited to see what this band does next, I'm sure they will only continue to improve their songwriting. Roebuck's lyrics are a strong point, bizarro quips of introspective thought which I think come from a genuine place. I also love Glover and bassists Sam Ruschman (who by the way is also a cool looking dude, they both definitely know how to wear hair)  playing style and presence in the band. They're both very distant and mellow but aggressive. Great stuff, definitely recommend checking it out if you like just about anything Sonic Youth has ever done, which you probably do.

No 'Weakness' Here

Dylan McCartney

Weakness Weakness Weakness 

Watching Weakness perform is like watching James Brown perform, if James Brown’s backing band played screechy, feedback-laden punk, and James Brown was a skinny white kid with swoopy hair. Their front man Kevin Doyle pogoes around the stage like he’s on a trampoline, he crawls on the ground, throws his guitar, all while belting out lyrics until his voice goes hoarse.

They’ve been a band for a few years, with a swinging door of musicians joining and leaving the band (Kevin and Michael Squeri are only two founding members remaining), they’ve played some noteworthy shows around the Midwest (including shows with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart) and they’ve been featured on Noisey Vice by The Black Lips.

Their live presence has always been their focal point, it seems. “Weakness melds cluster-bomb aural assault and ragdoll mania, so seamlessly you forget how tough it is to rock too hard while playing as far out as these four dudes,” says Charles D’Ardenne, who fronts the Cincinnati group Comprador and admires Weakness’s energy. “No other band in Cincinnati sounds this weird and dangerous. It’s enough to make you want to crawl in to the kick drum if primary vocalist/gymnast Kevin Doyle weren’t already messing around in there. Weakness hemorrhages punk.”

The three-piece Cincinnati based group—currently made up of members Kevin Doyle, Michael Squeri and Michael Sawan—started a few years ago as the brainchild of Doyle, who had been writing songs during his high school years.

“I met Michael Squeri (the drummer) at a bar where all the high school punk bands played in Cheviot (a small town outside of Cincinnati),” he says. “We were in equally shitty bands then, and he approached me interested in playing drums, and that’s how we started.”

They named the project “Weakness,” which Doyle says was the result of him trying to come up with a name that “didn’t sound tough.” The irony isn’t lost—like Joy Division, or Tiny Tim, the name is an antithesis of their reality. The guys in Weakness aren’t tough guys. In fact, Doyle is humble, cordial and overwhelmingly friendly— the kind of guy who would thank every single member of the crowd for coming to a show if he could. But their music sure isn’t as friendly. It’s a sort of crux between catchy punk, something you’d hear from a band like Tyvek, and an acute sonic barrage of shrill noise. But they're not quite that simple. They also slip some impressive dynamic songwriting in the mix, incorporating some weirdo quiet jams into their set. They’re the kind of band that acquires new true believers with every freakishly impressive performance.

On stage, Doyle is a blur of motion beside Michael Sawan, who alternates between groovy bass lines and piquant keyboard licks. Doyle jumps off of Squeri’s drum set, crawls on the ground (occasionally poking his head into Michael’s kick drum while doing so), climbs on rafters or whatever else he can grab on to that hangs from the ceiling, and hammers away at his beat up Fender Mustang.

He says he doesn’t practice the moves—they come naturally.

“Sometimes I get a little carried away,” Doyle says.  “I’ve messed up quite a bit of Michael’s drum kit. That’s why at this point I just tell him to use my drum gear.”

In addition to the appeal of their live show, there’s another aspect of the band that has sort of added to the mystique. They still haven’t released an album.

Not that they haven’t released several demo style recordings. One worth noting is  “The Tape,” a bombastically lo-fi collection of incredible songs with a picture of Doyle as a young boy with his hands pressed together like an altar boy and a toothy smile. It’s loud enough to cause your tape player to clip. 

The plan, according to Kevin, has been to rerecord several of the songs from that release as well as other songs they’ve had—and it seems like it’s finally going to happen. “We’re just about done recording all of this stuff,” Doyle says. “It’s been a long process, more-so because of things we can’t control, like our old guitarist moving away and stuff.”

“I don’t even want it printed how long this album has taken,” Kevin says, laughing. “This whole process has just been constipated, and I really hope it doesn’t flop.”

His humble nature (when we chatted, he consistently peppered in questions to me about my band, so as to assure that all the attention wasn’t on him) is refreshing, and interesting coupled with his on-stage persona as an unpredictable, Iggy Pop-style front man.

Weakness doesn’t want to be Black Flag. You won’t see them on stage with their eyebrows furled; trying to scare the audience into thinking they’re tough. They’re just some twenty-something’s who really, really like to make noise.

See also: Squeri’s other excellent band Gazer