The name Yes I’m Leaving suggests finality, tempered with a veneer of politeness: the author is walking out the door of a job, a relationship, a community, the tale of the statement signalling forever that what was once the source of enjoyment and satisfaction has gone stale. Or maybe it’s a mixture of resignation and resentment: fuck it, I’ll go now, I know when I’m not wanted.
Where does that place Yes I’m Leaving’s new album, Slow Release? Whereas the band’s 2012 album, Mission Bulb (which, like Slow Release, has been given the affectionate Homeless Records vinyl treatment) was confrontational to the point of sonic brutality, there’s something even tougher lurking in Slow Release. You can hear Joy Division fighting it out with feedtime on the opening track, One; on Puncher it’s Hot Tomatoes and Hoot McKloot getting shitfaced on West End Draught on a shitty Adelaide night. Fear is plagued with self-doubt and jarring Germanic melodic violence, Alchemy is X at the beach wreaking havoc on unsuspecting punters and Timer takes you to places where only the most resilient of musical wills can ever survive.
Salt sweats on a thudding bass riff and tries to see its way out of desolate suburbia, Care Less is Dinosaur Jr stumbling through the backstreets of Sydney searching for meaning and purpose, and if you’re not belted out of your comfort zone by the collage of white noise that opens Manic, then the dirty riff that succeeds it will slice straight through your puny whitebread existence. Funny is as humourous as The Mark of Cain barking orders, and just as impressive, Secret is the Cosmic Psychos with a gut full of amphetamines and Husk is all sneering attitude, loping bass line and rhetorical assault. Yes I’m Leaving aren’t going anywhere, and that’s a very good thing.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Alchemy
If You Like This, You’ll Like This: TIGER BY THE TAIL, FEEDTIME
In A Word: Brutal
