Yoo Doo Right have crafted an album that never tires, it’s an album that tosses you through an endless kaleidoscopic oblivion, stopping off briefly to allow each utopian dreamworld soak into your bloodstream before hurtling you onwards once more. It’s an album you cannot get bored of, simple as that!
Live music can possess you in so many ways. Recently, I was taking a breather mid-festival, eyes semi-closed, beer in hand, resting on a bench, blissfully unaware that the hypnotic murmurs I could hear behind the concrete wall I was resting against, were seeping into my body, right through to my feet, causing them to tap in sync with every muffled drumbeat that penetrated the mortar. It was at that moment that my torso dragged itself up and carried itself into the room, which was saturated and drowning in a shoegazed, psychedelic trip. The rich bass lines, and synthesised soundscapes carried throughout the room. Everyone that had congregated there were swaying and drowning in a percussive trance, with moody and melodic guitars brushing over its captive audience.
That was my experience of seeing and hearing Yoo Doo Right for the first time! As much as we love seeing our favourite artists playing live, there’s something extra special in finding someone new, a band that comes at you right out of leftfield and possesses your soul for 40 minutes. Yoo Doo Right’s ability to mesmerise and enthral you with their experimental concoction of krautrock, shoegaze and post-rock will hypnotize and paralyze, bringing you to a state of harmonic rapture and musical rhapsody
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Their latest release, A Murmur, Boundless To The East is an album that needs to be experienced without interference. Right from the opening track, Say Less, Do more, latches onto you with its dreamy bass guitar and addictive, opioid charm. When the vocals enter the mix, it is totally unexpected and refreshing. It’s a chant, a voice to the masses, that wakes the fuzzy guitars from their slumber, synchronising everyone into a musical ensemble that floats and levitates right through to the end of the track.
SMB is a hypnotic, slow building and foot tapping wall of lush, rich harmonics that take their orders from that metronomic kick drum and those gently plucked tremolo chords. Patience is a virtue on this track as it carefully adds layers of melody and suspense on top of the other, causing the body to rock ever so gingerly in anticipation of the magical moment when it all comes at you in a tsunami of textures and noise, which it does, momentarily, before retreating back into that slow metronomic drum kick.
Derive on the other hand is a flurry of noise that engulfs the senses with its spatial and wide-open sprawl of sounds and synths. It’s all very psychedelic and almost futuristic in delivery. Yoo Doo Right never let you fall into that trap of being bored or fatigued by the album, instead tracks like The Failure Is Stiff, Tired Friends brings the mind-bending groove back in time with a western themed guitar which plucks out desert riffs from the deep, wild west.
For me however, as amazing as this album is, the jewel in the crown must be the swansong, Feet Together, Face Up, On The Front Lawn. A glorious post rock intro unleashes a vocal delivery seldom associated with this style of music. It’s fresh, funky and thick with attitude, and breaks up each section of the track brilliantly, allowing the soundscapes to explode and grow in many directions. To call this track experimental would go some way in describing the journey it takes. Wailing guitars, married with downtrodden riffs make way for celestial orchestrated moments that swarm and expand beyond the horizon. Violins lament and drums crash, as the track comes to a drowsy, tortoise-like end, giving closure to this sixteen-minute epic.
Yoo Doo Right have crafted an album that never tires, it’s an album that tosses you through an endless kaleidoscopic oblivion, stopping off briefly to allow each utopian dreamworld soak into your bloodstream before hurtling you onwards once more. It’s an album you cannot get bored of, simple as that!