Yuck
Madam Jojo’s, London
14/09/2010

Yuck, the much-hyped London quartet formed from the ashes of Cajun Dance Party, wear their influences on their snotty denim sleeves.

Their shimmering Pavement-esque jangle is spliced with rickety percussion and layer upon layer of reverb-soaked guitars and modestly mixed vocals. This fashionably familiar blueprint puts them instantly in the same bracket as US contemporaries Girls, Crocodiles and Best Coast yet a certain, and very British, reluctance sets them apart from the stateside contingent. The intimacy of Madam Jojo’s is a near-perfect setting for their awkwardly introverted noise.

Opener ‘The Wall’ is coated in a discordant fuzz, whizzing past in less than three minutes before grinding to a halt. Yuck have honed their live show, guitarists cross swords coherently, the frequent soloing unexpectedly harmonious with the haphazard songs. Less in sync with what’s around him however is Yuck’s drummer Jonny Rogoff. His gigantic afro stands out from the skinny, denim clad trio in front of him, bobbing around as he beats the life out of his skins.

Amusingly, the White Heat backdrop behind him features a painted mushroom cloud explosion, which forms a perfect silhouette for his gravity defying ‘do.
Rogoff maintains his frantic percussive style throughout the night, from the meandering acoustics of ‘Suicide Policeman’ to a lovelorn romp through ‘Georgia’. But it is the tin can riffing of ‘Operation’ that stands out. Like The Strokes at their most nonchalant, it is a window into what this band are capable of.

Unfortunately, it’s a window sometimes obscured by the curtain of an unshakeable notion that Yuck are too well-placed, their influences too fashionable, that they are, perhaps, a little too good to be true. Tonight’s performance goes some way to ripping the curtain down altogether. It remains to be seen whether

Yuck’s patchwork promise can smash the window too.

Ben Homewood