Yallow "Rock With You" single released March 2020

Not to be confused with the Michael Jackson hit of the same name (not that you would), Rock With You is the latest release from Japanese ultra-rock outfit Yallows.

The laid-back intro reminded me of a couple of the bands I reviewed on the old mp3.com.au site back in the day, but  Rock With You really kicks in at 34” with twists and turns through the styles already established through their body of work, especially with their previous release “SYSTEM”.  

This isn’t to say that Rock With You is more of the same as Yallows already has in their body of work- this keeps surprising through subtle phrasing and soundscape changes. In Rock With You I got Courtney Love / Hole and Screamworld* vocals in the chorus and guitars throughout with appropriate chunks to keep things moving along as we’ve come to expect.

Whether you’re listening in the context of the other material on their YouTube channel or as a random stand-alone music lover trawling the Interwebz for new music, you’ll get into this one right up until the (spoiler alert) sudden ending. If you’re a lyrics-listener, though, you might want to read along with the appropriate page on their website.

Yallows- rock out!

PG (Jacky) Gleeson

27/04/2020

* Screamworld (no relation to the fun-park of the same name in Houston TX) was a band active on Sydney’s alt-rock / pre-Internet underground in the mid-1990s. Steve Harris and Debbie were life-partners at the time as well as the musical muse of this outfit. I wasn’t able to find anything online about them at the time of writing the TOAN and TOAN2 reviews and material still isn’t available. Suffice is to say that vocalist Debbie sounded for all the world, with her own inimitable twist, like Courtney Love at the time

Yallows

My exposure to music from Japan has been limited to Shonen Knife, Cokehead Hipsters, and J-pop (to which the YouTube rabbit-hole took me at the end of it all!). So when I came across the YouTube channel for J-Rock outfit Yallows, I was literally blown away!

Inside One’s Mind was my introduction to the project, followed by Who Am I? These two not-quite-metal but beyond-rock tracks create the chunk and groove to which many bands can only aspire. There is a distinct flavour of 1990s/2000s emo, along with the mood created by Christopher Larkin on the Hollow Knight soundtrack; Sydney alternapunk Screamworld, and 1990s pedestrian-rockers Shotgun and IGNITE: the latter of whom were inspired by early Black Sabbath and mid-career Iron Maiden. You will also find sounds akin to 1990s grungemeisters Jane’s Addiction, Soundgarden, Hole, and Rage Against The Machine; Ego changed direction completely with a tilt at Ben Folds.

The biggest drawback to the recordings is a lack of clarity. Having listened to this through both my laptop and my phone, I found the top-end lacking on every track. This in turn led to muddy lyrics, etc, but the bottom-end carried through all of this. A little cleaning-up of the recordings might improve this issue. Inside One’s Mind, Who Am I?, 6 , and Ego were the cleanest recordings; Dear Enemy is my standout of the collection to date.

There are twelve tracks on this YouTube channel, including a couple of demos which I skipped because the raw power in the other tracks demanded that only the finished product would do. The artwork for each song is also indicative of what one can expect therein: dark, brooding and, mostly, unerringly heavy.

Yallows – Japan’s next big Rock Act. Track them down, look them up, encourage their development!

PG (Jacky) Gleeson

9 February 2020