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 statement signalling that what was once the source of enjoyment and satisfaction has gone stale. Or maybe it’s a mixture of resignation and resentment.
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. The thudding bass riff on ‘Salt’ 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.
Yes I’m Leaving aren’t going anywhere, and that’s a very good thing.
3.5/5.
Slow Releaseis out now through Homeless.
