Album Review; YETI LANE – THE ECHO SHOW
YETI LANE THE ECHO SHOW Sonic Cathedral recordings
Yeti Lane, the duo that rose from the ashes of the highly acclaimed French dream-pop act Cyann & Ben benefitted from a lack of expectation with their self titled debut released at the start of 2010. Despite being an impressive debut it was more of a pointer of things to come, they were finding their way as a duo, working out how to make just as many sounds as before with half the amount of people while forging new sounds they didn’t know they had yet.
‘The Echo show’ is a clear statement of intent, much more direct and assured; it’s the sound of an act that is no longer bowed of head and apologetic. They thrash their sound with swathes of multi-coloured psychedelic hoo-ha over a collection of songs which although are definitely not pop, come from a love of the stuff.
The pronounced swagger of their sound is evident within the first few seconds of opener ‘The Analogue wheel’. Warm and yes, analogue ambient swirls of luscious sound slowly build into a progressive, repetitive beat ending up with rivers of shoegazing guitar riffs, it’s as if they’ve taken the techno sounds of Detroit, planted them back to their birthplace in mid-70’s Germany, brought back to life in 2012 Paris and put Neu! On remix duties.
With woozy vocal stylings reminiscent of Granddaddy’s Jason Lytle’s heavily reverbed and liberal use of broken instruments to convey their big ideas, ‘The Echo show is dreamy and emotive and crammed with an impressive amount of sounds and ideas.
Produced by Antoine Gailet, a one time member of Yet Lane’s old label mates M83, comparisons are understandable but lazy. M83’s crossover album of 2011 ‘Hurry up, we’re dreaming’ (also engineered by Gailet) failed due to a horrendously bombastic approach to the songs, everything was cranked up to 11, the level of pomposity making it utterly unlistenable, even Billy Corgan would think it all a bit farfetched.
Yeti Lane take the opposite approach, they excel when making complicated songs sound simple, a song such as ‘Warning sensations’ initially sounds like a sweet indie pop song without much happening but it’s highly complex; a thousand techno bleeps, the kind of insistent synth riffs so relied upon by Ladytron all topped off with guitar work that you usually hear on a record by The Shadows, it’s this knack of appearing subtle that makes ‘The Echo show such a success, ‘Sparkling Sunbeam’ is casually epic where they indulge in a spot of My Bloody Valentine-isms with some white noise action and ‘swoon some dream-punk of ‘Alba’ sounds like it’s beamed down to Earth from Mars.
‘The Echo show’ wraps you up in drowsy warmth and doesn’t want to let you go until it transports you to another state of mind. You’ll be pretty pushed to hear a better album this year, all music should sound like this. 9/10
Chris Todd