REVIEW: Yatsura, Slain By Urusei Yatsura (Warner)
- Tim Mohr
Doing for Scotland what Ash do for Northern Ireland, (Urusei) Yatsura play fast, fun, and loud, with attention to enjoyable hooks and melodies. Like Ash, the style and song titles seem to borrow from good-natured punkers such as the Undertones and Ramones.
The riffs that anchor Yatsura songs are quite angular, as on the album opener, "Glo Starz," that skips along like an old Fugazi song--"Repeater" perhaps--while they shout nearly-phonetically identical phrases: "Atari! I'm Sorry!"
The big single, "Hello Tiger," is more straight-forward. Chugging along atop a steady three-chord progression, the lyrics hit a series of images from contemporary club life. Sprinkled here and elsewhere are "La-la-la"s, "Na-na-na"s, and other vocal indications of a quality garage band.
"No. 1 Cheesecake" brings a touch of romance to the party, albeit with odd lines about missing out on the century because of memories filled with images of your eyes like jellybeans. Or something like that. None of the syrupy stuff that Ash let (d)rip in "Goldfinger" or "Oh Yeah."
Basically, if the members of Fugazi had never been "straight-edge" (and middle-class residents of Northwest DC), and instead had grown up in council flats in Glasgow, drinking, dreaming of making music for a laugh instead of scoring political victories, they would have formed Yatsura.
