Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Yourself And The Air


Somewhere between Northwestern indie rock, the Rocky Mountains and post punk lie the strangely named, Yourself and the Air. This reckless group of musicians user their shambolic, tangled, jumpy guitars and stop start rhythms to haunt the songs they write like a family trapped in an eternal game of Twister. Yourself and the Air's EP, Friend Of All Breeds is a moody five song slice of brilliance the slowly grows on you the more you listen to it. This is a band and an EP that jumps around more than a bunny rabbit at Easter and thumps it's angular pop into your skull in a variety of ways.

Maneuvering between dark slices of pop and nearly jovial jangle, Friend Of All Breeds harks back to a time when songs were the centerpiece of a band and not the level of pretentiousness that surrounds them. Friend Of All Breeds is filled with fantastic songs that simply end to quickly; they're here and they're gone before you know it. In other words, by the time you reach song number five, it's as if you should have seven or eight more songs but it's at that point you realize all to quickly that the record is actually over. It's quite distressing because of how good those five songs really are. It's a songwriting conspiracy. It's almost as if they cut things short on purpose to tempt you into something, something that doesn't exist yet, and something that will leave you ravenous for more. They've done a good job at doing just that because Friend Of All Breeds is the best combination of Modest Mouse and the Cure you are likely to ever hear and after listening to this thing a dozen times I'm left salivating for a full album from Yourself and the Air.

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