Yay! YCNI:M are one of those bands I'm never ashamed to admit liking. Remember when they popped up roughly around the same time as the second Jetplane Landing album and Kill Kenada and 65daysofstatic and everyone got really, really excited about music again? That was a good summer, or winter, or whatever. I don't know why, but I always seem to remember everything good coming out in the summer, whereas in my mind the depths of winter only seem to offer lots and lots of Fratellis singles. But I digress. We have an album to discuss. And guess what? Today is the first day of british summertime!
The album starts off sounding vaguely like Wolfmother, of all bands. At least for the first 30 seconds or so. Should we really be surprised? Probably not, especially from a band who have gone from making jarringly dissonant post-hardcore on their debut mini-album 'All Roads To Fault' to sea shanties with their friends on Print Is Dead Vol. 1, via soaring, stellar anthems like '17' on 'Ignoto'. Via the semi-prog 'Schteeve'. Via the apocalyptic, and frankly amazing, 'Rapt. Dept.' Wolfmother? The real surprise is that they're not sounding like either Vivaldi or the Spice Girls this week.
Don't let comparisons to everyone favorite snooze-prog revivalists put you off reading this review, though. That would be a crime and a disservice. I'll let you in on a secret. This album is excellent. Really, really excellent. Not quite genre-defining or legend-making, but I am a man of faith. My faith that they still have a record like that up their sleeve is only strengthened by what's on offer here.
That first track, 'Pacific Theatre', really comes racing out of the speakers. Urgent, inistent and loud, it works as a brilliant base for Pauls still wonderfully camp, soaring vocals, which in turn work brilliantly to make the lyrics sound as demented as they are meant to.
Single 'Understand' pops up third after the tension filled 'All That Was Missing', sounding like a refined '17' with even more of a pop sensibility, crazy vocorders going off all over the place, a chorus that will stick in your head for weeks, and which contains a brilliantly geordie "Hullow hullow". Fucking A+ grade material, without a doubt.
The album loses just a touch of pace thereafter, kinda petering out a bit. This isn't totally a bad thing, because the next three songs are still good, but as the insistent, stomping 'I'm Impressed', early Cooper Temple Clause referring electronic noodling of 'About Leaving' and the delicate grower 'Sixfive' pass you by, you can't help but both applaud the band for their range of sound, but wish they'd be a little heavier a little more often.
Your wish? Their command. 'Translate', an upcoming download-only single, sort of comes across as this albums 'Rapt. Dept.' As the song builds, sparse, almost ghastly vocals surround guitars and a pounding drumbeat. Eventually, these give way to the brutally heavy second half of the song, the main riff tearing at your skull, amps set to 11 or 12, and as pitch dark as you like. It's all very exciting. A highlight? Definitely.
The next track, 'Evening', continues in a similar vein. Equally heavy but with far more urgency than 'Translate', it makes for a fitting follow up, with yet another standout vocal. Are you growing tired of me talking about them yet? The vocals have always been, and remain, a highlight of any YCNI:M release. Pauls voice is distincive, very unusual, and fits the music like the metaphorical glove, and definitely helps to elevate this band to their position above their peers. 'Take To The Floor' just confirms this, whilst the rest of the band continue in the heavy proggy manner of the last few tracks. It's also about this point there the record starts to make sense as a whole, rather than just a collection of songs. From raucous and poppy, to calm and delicate, to brutally dark, you can only wonder where they're going to take us next.
Back to 'Sixfive' it seems at first, although 'To The Cars' is only as delicate for the first half of its stay. From the two minute mark, it becomes towering, monolithic, and triumphant, but also very uplifting. The sound is very Pelicanesque. It's nowhere near as dark as 'Evening' or 'Take To The Cars', either. It's not even in the same postcode. The band have taken you all the way down, and now they're bringing you, by the hand, back up for air.
You break the surface as 'Screaming Ground' begins. As an uptempo, positive track, it definitely has more in common with the first half of this album than the second, and it works superbly, hand in hand with the outro 'Dicta Boelcke', to bring the listener full circle. Only relaxed, calm, optimistic, and in awe of a band that can produce an album this coherent, this simultaneously dark yet uplifting, and this plain heavy. This is indisputably the new high water mark for YCNI:M. It's probably 2007's high water mark thus far. It's a step forward for British post-hardcore the size of which hasn't been seen since Hundred Reasons and Hell Is For Heroes bothered the charts back in that hazy summer I alluded to before. And, in a musical landscape that is increasingly dominated by next weeks Libertines and last weeks Kaiser Chiefs, albums as inventive and ballsy as this have to be cherished. I hope, for all of our sakes, that this isn't as good as it gets for British post-hardcore, because if it's not, then we have something really, seminally special to look forward to before the decade is out. And, on this evidence, there is no reason why Yourcodenameis:milo can't be the band to offer it.
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