Yuck – ‘Shook Down’

I feel compelled to write about Yuck again. They’ve been as much a part of the fabric of my non-existent summer as Real Estate, and if this site is to be about songs that we’re listening to, then’ Shook Down’ must surely be it. The British band of apparent heir-apparents to Seattle’s throne have been in town recently for the same festival that brought the whole of Young Turks, SBTRKT, Feist, Laura Marling and company down under and whatever my misgivings about the group have been completely abandoned in light of the fact that they are a Very Good Band when they’re in front of you as much as their seductive, self-titled debut record which my girlfriend just discovered and has announced as the best thing ever. Sure, their music sits conveniently in that pocket of 1994-1996 where practically every rock tune was killer and we all loved everything and wore cargo pants, but they’ve managed to take the slacker grunge element and add some more pretty, shoegazey elements to it which comes out a lot more in their live performance. There are a lot of one name bands who came out or returned to the fore in the last twelve months, but the big different with Yuck, especially seeing them on stage, is that I believe them. I really do. Semi-awkward Jewish kids who’ve spent a bit too much time experimenting with their pedal boards and haven’t seen the sun in weeks? Bring it on.

The Yuck catalogue, which is currently one very good album and an EP or two, can be roughly divided into fast-paced distortion ‘bangers’ (such a bad word, we need to recapture the lexicon for rock’n'roll) and finger-picked torch songs which turn into heavy emotional choruses drenched in feedback. It’s actually the latter which work better in my opinion, showing off not only the versatility of the two guitarists who lead the group but also frontman Daniel Blumberg, who’s on-note the entire show when I see them and just keeps on getting more and more loveable as it goes. ‘Shook Down’ straddles the divide between these two ‘types’ but mostly sits comfortably in the ‘ballad you’d dance to if you didn’t know there was a fuzz bomb around the corner’ category. As with all Yuck songs, it’s deceptively simple; I remember hearing it the first time and betting that I could play it. But when you see how Max and Ezra spar with their lead lines and accompaniment it becomes obvious that these aren’t throwaways they felt compelled to come up with to fill places on a record (and Lord knows I’ve heard enough of them lately), but serious songwriting work. I will be taken to task for this statement by all the classicists and scholars of the late ’80s and early ’90s but I don’t really care.

Because I’m the kind of person who lives for the thirty seconds of a song that nobody else finds important (for an in-depth look at this, please see my unravelling of The Pharcyde’s ‘Soul Flower’ and then have me committed), the bit that really turns ‘Shook Down’ into a OAD-worthy tune happens right before the three minute mark where the bridge kicks in in all it’s glory and the second guitar solo line bursts out in colour amid the reverb and the noise. ‘You could be my destiny,’ croons Daniel, ‘You could mean that much to me.’ That is an incredible lyric, in my opinion. Full of possibility, swimming in hypotheticals and being tossed to and fro by wave upon wave of crashing guitars and root note bass, it’s the point where Yuck go from a thing to A Thing and I actually form a lasting emotional attachment to them which means I actively seek out their future releases. It’s not like you have to wait out the whole song for it, because the rest is incredibly pretty anyway. But when it ramps up and hits you in the gut, don’t pretend I didn’t warn you that things would get emotional. High school is over. It’s going to be a long summer yet.

Yuck – ‘Shook Down’