Liverpool-based punk outfit Yammerer are a band with something to say, and a distinctive way of saying it. Consisting of J George JC (vocals), Gajo Paco (guitar), Steve Dee (guitar), Connor Simpson (bass) and Jason Dugdale (drums), the quintet make a boisterous, snarling brand of music born in the miasmic swamps of improvisational psychedelica and hammered into a kind of incandescent rage by the ridiculous world around us.
New EP Reality Escape Resort, released via Restless Bear Records, makes this clear, pitched somewhere between the bizarro experimentation of Snapped Ankles and the wry punk wrath of early Protomartyr. Like the latter, Yammerer are ambitious and wide-ranging in their ideas and references, and the EP is ordered according to the overarching themes. The first three songs of the release present “an account of the causes of suffering; Delusion, Aversion and Attachment, respectively,” the band explain, with the final track providing “an account of the cycle of these three causes.”
Taking on delusion, opener ‘Airport’ is a bullish song where the upbeat mood is undercut by a seam of menace, the buoyant sound masking some great void, one just waiting for the fuel to run out so that it might swallow you whole. Given the theme of the track however, this is never acknowledged, instead more and more gasoline is burned as the vocals grow increasingly frantic, as though escape is possible if only you keep moving. But in reality by going higher and higher you only increase the eventual fall.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=1678237813 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=1719093745]
We wrote about ‘Poisonous Reptilian Colleague’s & Co’ in a preview a few months ago, a song which “combines the dark prophecies of Nick Cave with The Fall’s caustic charm and creates a sonic beast of many heads—each snarling and sneering and prone to howls of execration.” ‘YVES HD’ follows with its hectic psychedelic energy, a hyperactive track that teeters on the lip of carefree abandon and stares into the depths of unhinged release over the edge.
All three tracks occupy a curious space, that brief moment between losing control and fearing the result, an exalted state of forward motion that cannot last and will surely terminate in fiery violence. But for now, before the heat and force and flames are upon us, there’s a thrill to be had, an escape from reality, so long as one keeps their head down, thoughts to a minimum, and submits to the force.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=1678237813 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=2790081494]
In keeping with its thematic role on the release, closer ‘Seasons 13-31’ is vast and sprawling, finding momentum and dying and rising again. The vocals veer from a raucous punk shout to sardonic conversation, all unfurling with the seamless logic of some manic prophet, yelling his convoluted sermon at the ceiling and walls.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=1678237813 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=858382852]
Reality Escape Resort is out now via Restless Bear Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.
