Montreal-based group
Yoo Doo Right released their debut album in 2021, the year after they shared a split single with Japanese heavy psych legends
Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO. The group obviously take their name from an early
Can song, so it's fair to expect a certain amount of groove-based repetition in their music, but their sound is a bit darker and more bombastic, and has more of an air of cult mysticism. The band's second album,
A Murmur, Boundless to the East, was recorded by
Jerusalem in My Heart's
Radwan Ghazi Moumneh at Montreal's Hotel2Tango studio and mixed by
Seth Manchester at Rhode Island's Machines with Magnets. The band's lineup on the recording consisted of guitarist and synth player
Justin Cober, bassist
Charles Masson, and drummer
John Talbot, with
Silver Mt. Zion violinist
Jessica Moss guesting on two pieces.
With only five tracks making up the 45-minute album, the band take their time and stretch out, but they still play with force and never seem like they're meandering. "Say Less, Do More" starts with thundering drums and lush layers of atmospheric guitar and violin before
Cober's unexpectedly brash vocals burst forth, sounding far more like the leader of a U.K. post-punk band than a Canadian post-rock group. "SMB" is a steadily paced instrumental which gradually boils up in a vibrato-heavy crescendo. "The Failure of Stiff, Tired Friends" feels more like a lonesome desert journey, with illuminating synthesizers setting the pace and a spaghetti Western guitar melody driving the feeling home. Most impressive is the 16-minute epic which concludes the album, "Feet Together, Face Up, On the Front Lawn." Starting with shoegazey guitars and drums which continually crash, the band shifts to a faster, racing rhythm and
Cober shouts "Tango, at least that can make you happy," possibly referring to the studio where the band recorded the album. Alternating between the slower crashes and the sprinting sections, the band eventually seems to enter a state where time doesn't exist, drawing out the rhythm as the guitars roar skyward. By the end, the pace has slowed down to a crawl and the guitar feedback has clustered into an overwhelming, brain-nullifying mess, and it feels euphoric.
Yoo Doo Right are skilled at employing restraint, but when they let themselves go it feels truly earth-shaking. ~ Paul Simpson