Yellow Swans
Bring the Neon War Home (Narnack)

Although extreme noise terror never goes out of fashion, it rarely amounts to more than a one-line joke. It's hard enough to sustain interest in unrelenting cacophony past the two-minute mark, let alone from one track to another. (Metal Machine Music, anyone?) Sure, the discipline-and-punish aesthetic makes for a great concept but one person's provocative theoretical idea about aural pleasure and enjoyment is another person's unlistenable din. That said, the Bay Area duo Yellow Swans strike a balance: this 40-minute EP cranks out more racket than Slazenger but the listening experience is also engrossing, even pleasurable in a conventional sense. Its mixture of metallic KO, electronic detritus and beats -- a hybrid of analog/digital and organic/synthetic -- could be the soundtrack to a death match between Mark Stewart, Swans and Throbbing Gristle. This isn't a monolith of unremitting and unvaried noise that simply crushes you into submission but a dynamic, textured environment that envelops and transports, albeit often to places you'd rather not go. "Police Eternity" whips up a Digital Hardcore-style industrial maelstrom with assaultive beats and half-buried satanic voices, while the squalling electronics on "High on the Mountain of Love" suggest Hawkwind on a bad trip, their spaceship ultimately disintegrating on re-entry. It's not all completely harrowing, though. During the 13 minutes of "Neon War," there are some less abrasive (although no less unsettling) passages, and the second of the EP's two untitled numbers comprises a tense, fragmented soundscape occasionally recalling Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis's noisier experiments. Yellow Swans offer the ideal musical accompaniment to your nervous breakdown. File under "Music for Asylums". (Wilson Neate)

YESTERDAY'S KIDS
CAN'T HEAR NOTHIN' (LOOKOUT)

This is the band you've gone to see locally, somewhere with a small alternative scene, the only alternative band in town. You go hug your friend the bassist after the set and say, "Great show, man!" not really meaning it. Yesterday's Kids are tight, they do practice a lot, but there' s nothing remotely original about them. Good vibes abound, but they're one of 10,000 bands exactly like this in America--a bunch of white guys from California with an amateurish CD their family and friends are probably damn proud of. One song, "I Don't Care," starts out with a promising riff but descends again into lame formula. They seem so nice, but the album should really be called Can't Hear Nothin' Original. (Tiina Lombard)

YO LA TENGO
SUMMER SUN (MATADOR)

As the yin-yang of Yo La Tengo goes, Summer Sun represents the quiet, whispery side of the band. Don't go expecting, from the title, any kind of snappy homage to summer ala the Beach Boys, though. Instead, the band lays down a kind of jazzy carpet, replete with moody keyboards and insistent percussion, and floats a bakers' dozen melancholy, gently melodic gems over the top. Guitarist Ira Kaplan forsakes distortion and feedback here for a much more measured approach throughout, while drummer Georgia Hubley is in beautiful voice on the downbeat swirl of "Winter A-Go-Go," perhaps the album's most immediately striking cut. Too obtuse and dense to keep company with their unforgettable 1990 collection of covers, Fakebook, Summer Sun nonetheless confounds expectations after the experimental and nigh-on perfect And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out by uncluttering and simplifying. Not perhaps the most dazzling Yo La Tengo effort ever, but a worthy one. (Luke Torn)

Dwight Yoakam
Blame The Vain (New West)

Believe this: Blame The Vain is one of the best country albums of the year, if only because Yoakam toys with his genre in the same way that great rockers have confronted with pigeonholed expectations: The Rolling Stones writing “Dead Flowers,” U2 enlisting Johnny Cash for a duet, or Elvis Costello recording in Nashville all come to mind. Here, particularly on “She’ll Remember,” Yoakam’s sound is so unrecognizable as the song begins, even fans won’t recognize the anguished voice, as it’s more like Garth Brooks recording a bad acid trip. But any panic is eased as the song returns to comfortable steel guitar territory, and Yoakam has made his point while stretching boundaries. He has done this before of course, as on 1995’s masterwork “Gone,” but there’s still an underlying sameness to his modernized Bakersfield sound, that no matter how high quality the performance, it’s hard for many (or me anyway) to distinguish one album from another. Whether the jettisoning of longtime producer/foil Pete Anderson had anything to do with Vain’s freshness is anybody’s guess. Surely it’s been a long time since “Fast As You” was on the Top 10 charts, and something caused Yoakam to squat on his spurs and get serious about this one. The self-deprecating title track on Vain is pretty funny for a guy who still (I believe) wears leather pants, but there’s still a status quo consistency to the first half of the album, exemplified by the beautiful ballad “Does It Show” or the rockabilly “Three Good Reasons,” that is transcended in the last half, so thoroughly shredded that the album clearly emerges as yet another high water mark in Yoakam’s distinguished career. – David Pyndus

YOUNG AND SEXY
Panic When You Find It
mint
The secret behind Young and Sexy’s obvious appeal is the vocal interplay of lead singers Lucy Brain and Paul Hixon Pittman. That and the obvious care put into these basically mellow soft-pop tracks. Right from “Your Enemy’s Asleep,” Young and Sexy’s invention & vibrancy shine through. Sprightly “The Curious Organ” follows and it continues the melancholy vibe. Then Lucy Brain takes over and how: “Without Your Love” features smoky vocals from Lucy and her voice will strike directly at your heart, “All the Little Girls And Boys” is a precious Wilsonesque ditty that could conceivably be mistaken for an outtake from Smile! That good. Whilst “5/4” is late-night jazzy ballad that Elvis Costello used to specialize in circa early '80s. Pittman returns to sing on “The Night Wears a Sombrero,” a Bacharach-channeling soft pop masterpiece with unique chord changes. “Conventional Lullabies” finds Young and Sexy delivering sophisticated pop ala labelmates The New Pornographers. Even after all that excellence, Young and Sexy manages to leave the best for the last three tracks with a focus on rustic beauty. The lovely “Turn On Your Weakness” is fragile folk-pop which evokes Nick Drake, “Trespass On a Thought” is ambient & cinematic, like Philip Glass scoring a Western, and “Satellite” atmospheric country-shoegaze, reminiscent of early Mojave 3. Any way you look at it, Panic When You Find It is an accomplished work.  --Kevin Mathews

Adrienne Young & Little Sadie
The Art Of Virtue (Addiebelle Records)

Opening with an assured Irish feistiness that belies what The Art Of Virtue is about, Adrienne Young proves to be artful, intelligent and backwoodsy all at once. This is also one of the most politically subversive albums you’re likely to hear, especially if you believe there is a connection between buying organic food and supporting your community. Several of the songs were inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s pamphlet on his Thirteen Virtues, and Young and band Little Sadie are certainly endowed with a spirit of independence and self-reliance that shine. Deep down, the Floridian is more like Stevie Nicks without the hocus pocus. Even “Rastus Russell,” a brutal and true story Young learned from her grandfather, has an echo of Fleetwood Mac musically, though it’s the cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Brokedown Palace” that will generate raves. Fiddle, banjo, and dobro ring throughout the set, whether the subject is joyful or gritty. There’s the “bitter slice of American pie” served up to immigrants in the excellent “Walls Of Jericho,” a reminder of how there is not always a level playing field in the vastness of America. Yet unabashed delight is heard in the gospel standard “Farther Along” and the romantic “Wedding Ring.” As expressed in the title track, Young and band are enjoying a “joy ride on a learning curve.” As are we all. – David Pyndus

Eli Young Band
Level (carnival recording)

This is the future of Texas music? No, let’s continue to look to Hayes Carll for that. Sure, this young quartet shows potential on their debut Level, but that promise isn’t likely to establish historical value. Instead, it might land them a slot on the Ellen Degeneres Show. This album’s slick enough, poppy enough and far enough away from true country to accomplish that. Bottom line: the Eli Young Band is just another minnow in the vast ocean of “country” music, and Level is almost entirely unremarkable, really. One positive that comes across clearly is that the band succeeds when it tries the least. For instance, at the heart of “Everything is You” lies an understated and simple beauty. Much of the rest, though, remains faceless and mediocre. --Brian T. Atkinson

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