Yellow [LP]

by Naomi Punk

Overview

After The Feeling introduced a wider audience to their high-concept collage punk, Naomi Punk spent their next two albums tweaking its scale: They tightened and sharpened it on Television Man, transforming it into modular anti-pop, but on Yellow they try something more radical -- which is saying something, since their music often feels like a direct challenge to the status quo. They embrace the indulgence of the double-album format, exploding their high-concept sounds and strewing them across 74 minutes and two personas, Naomi Punk and their alter-ego the Scorpions. As they incorporate found sounds, library music, and calls to smash the system into Yellow's expanse, they make some of the most challenging music of their career. The band begin the album with not one but two disorienting introductions, one of which prominently features bass (an instrument they don't normally use), while the claustrophobic "Chains" was one of the album's singles. Throughout Yellow, Naomi Punk forces listeners to take the album at its own speed, and the deliberate pace of tracks like "Motorcade" suggests each song is a hard-won battle. Elsewhere, they juxtapose choppy with flowing, and pretty with ugly, in ways that feel like odd mutations: Oil slick guitars coat "Thru the Trees" without ever actually coalescing, and "Chernobyl Carrot" is fittingly warped and jumbled. The feeling that a polluted Earth is ready to take its revenge on humanity permeates songs as diverse as "My Shadow," which buries funky '80s pop under several tons of sludge, and the coded disaffection of "Yellow Cone Hat," where a mudslide that covers the freeway is just one of its unnatural disasters. Despite the emphasis on murky repetition that makes Yellow feel more like an extended meditation than a collection of songs (when Travis Coster sings "change my frame of mind" on "Chapter II," it sounds alternately like a wish, a command, and a mantra), it's undeniable that the clearest-sounding tracks are the most accessible; named after emblems of consumption and packaging, "Cookie" and "Cardboard" are even nimbler than Television Man's prototypes. Yellow's best moments may be even more dynamic than those of its predecessor, particularly on the glowering "Perfect" and "Journey to the Top"'s whispery menace and jackhammer guitars. And even though the Scorpions have the last word with "Scorpion Theme," its mix of lunging riffs and rain feel quintessentially Naomi Punk. ~ Heather Phares

Product Details

Release Date:	08/04/2017
Label:	Captured Tracks
UPC:	0817949013448
Rank:	168617

Tracks

Disc 1

1. Introduction 1
2. Introduction 2
3. Chernobyl Carrot
4. Cookie
5. Cardboard
6. Thru the Trees
7. Chapter 2
8. Tiger Pipe
9. My Shadow
10. Gotham Brake
11. The Sound of Music
12. Scorpion Demo
13. Perfect
14. On Mi Mind
15. Scorpion Glue
16. Matroska

Disc 2

17. Yellow Cone Hat
18. Carniceria
19. Motorcade
20. Chains
21. Taurus
22. 70 Cents
23. Journey to the Top
24. Cookie 2
25. Scorpion Theme

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Naomi Punk   Primary Artist
Neil Gregerson   Flute,Guitar,Synthesizer
Travis Coster   Guitar (Acoustic),Synthesizer,Vocals,Guitar
Nic Luempert   Drums

Technical Credits

Naomi Punk   Producer,Engineer,Composer
Josh Bonati   Mastering
Travis Coster   Artwork
Neil Gregerson   Producer,Artwork