YOLKE - POPPY WASH (2010)

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"Sunrise Eyes / Western Star":


"A little secret, genteel TSB reader: I’m one of those curmudgeonly types known among the staff as a “post-rock unfriendly.” This doesn’t mean that I don’t like post-rock – in my case, it means that I used to love the stuff, came into the genre weaned on larger-than-genre-tag greats like Tortoise, Flying Saucer Attack, Talk Talk, plus a coupla Canuck bands that need no name-drop here, and, as I return to that stuff as my point of reference for what made this approach to rockomposition so exciting, I tend to find the newer stuff a bit lacking, and waste valuable TSB bandwidth griping to fellow staffers about the popularity of 3rd-wave post-rock bands that our readers probably love. The point of all this is that, given my status, if a post-rock album gets passed my way to review, either the omnipotent lords of review karma have deemed it irrelevant enough for me to tear to shreds, or it’s good enough that I might actually brush the cobwebs and crust away from the porch (off of which I holler at youngins and whippersnappers tarnishing my post-rock memories) and realize that there’s still life yet in this dying equine. Australia’s Yolke and its Poppy Wash EP is, thankfully, a case of the latter.

Lest I seem disingenuous to the reader that clicks on over to Yolke’s myspace (or the free download of the entire EP), the band isn’t exactly “post-rock” in the sense that has been canonized since the millennial turn – the sound on Poppy Wash isn’t epic, there aren’t any crescendos, there’s no use of quiet-loud dynamics, and absolutely none of it feels calculatingly larger-than-life in the manner that has come to be associated with the concept of all things “post.” Rather, Yolke emphasizes subtlety and texture, restrained (but more than capable) musicianship, and a strong lean into indie-pop songcraft – realistically, this could just as easily be labeled ambient indie or dreampop. Genre hairsplitting is best left to the theologically inclined, however (how many post-rock bands can fit on the head of a pin, I wonder); Yolke’s sound is as effortless and natural as it is vaguely difficult to categorize. Think of the smart, poppish dynamics of American Analog Set, Movietone, and early Broken Social Scene mixed with a jazzy swing, occasional electronic textures, and shoegaze’s wall of haze extended into the foggy psych of FSA, the result coming out somewhat near – but distinct from – genre godhead Talk Talk, but without all that messy ambition and anxiety. It’s not exactly original – Yolke’s charms are familiar and comforting – but it is unique, especially when considered in the context of the wider genre’s increasingly narrow approach. This might not be post-rock now, but it would have been then.

What works best about Poppy Wash is how warm and sun-kissed it feels. Song titles – “Sunsex,” “Solar Hands,” “Sunrise” – repeatedly evoke the theme of our parent star, but it’s the music that truly inspires this feeling. Gentle guitar strums underpinned by jazz drums slowly meld into a deeply luxuriant mist of keys, electronics, and billowy feedback; instead of disorientation, Yolke’s approach to psych summons up nostalgia and imagination, evoking never-lived memories of late-summer reveries on the shores of a shady lake, later-romanticized first love, and feelings of boundless opportunity juxtaposed against a lazed and hedonistic appreciation of the now. AmAnSet once termed itself the Golden Band, and Yolke earns that moniker: for all the boundless suggestiveness of its sound, and for all the times when the more song-oriented moments slide into dreamlike, ambient interludes (as when opener “Origami Crane” gives way to “The Box One”), the overall sense is of a tightly-controlled unit operating at maximum efficiency, succeeding perfectly within the limits it has set for itself. That ability to make the orchestrated and engineered sound so open and unbounded is precisely what makes Poppy Wash so special.

Or, at least part of it – the other part is that, all attempts at critical dissection aside, this is just plain-old beautiful. Moments like “Western Star,” where the band coaxes fractured electronics into an exhausted yelp of rickety, barely-together pop, defy any simple description of technique and approach to explain their wondrousness, and render discussions of aesthetic value meaningless: sometimes it’s enough to be lazily beautiful. Yolke easily deserves the attention that other nostalgic, dreampop acts like Atlas Sound and Ariel Pink are getting, and if there were any justice to the universe, it would get it. Without the indie-hype machinery churning behind the band, such acclaim seems doubtful, but that doesn’t stop Poppy Wash from being one of the least-pretentious, most-refreshing releases in 2010’s indie sphere – and as a free download courtesy of the band and Fallopian Tunes, listeners can experience all of its audial warmth guilt-free." (Lucas Kane - The Silent Ballet)

Yolke myspace