Review Summary: The uninteresting tales of a band trying to find their footing in a field where everyone else already has
Yukon Blonde: It's not so much a bad aftertaste as it is a forgettable burst of
something-not-quite-right - something bland and amateurish that stems from the marriage of Yukon Blonde's modern sensibilities and their lack of edge. Something complacent with being inoffensive, outrageously modern and juvenile. It's a clean-cut ailment that lacks personality, something as frustratingly unassuming and structured as an IKEA store.
Yukon Blonde lack the guts that their sound desperately needs to succeed, as their modern soft-rock and '60s-style folk amalgam has worked for others an innumerable amount of times, but not under the circumstances that they are under – circumstances which include a cookie-cutter but admittedly clean-sounding vocalist, primitive rock chords and drum patterns and of course the band's incredible lack of lasting power. Sure, the band hits the occasional bright spot when these elements come unbelievably close to being satisfying, but they're reminders of the album's most noticeable flaw: most of the time there's little to remember on
Yukon Blonde. Even on the track's highlights, the guitar-centric and folksy “Brides Song” and the anthemic “Wind Blows,” there's barely a substantial thought about your experience with them when they've run their individual courses.
You try to pin down a refrain or a vocal line to your memory as you would a note to cork board, but the task is beyond you. Why? Because the sum of
Yukon Blonde's parts leads to a whole without personality or charisma to back up its primitive musicianship and tired ideas. That's to say that you'll try to pin down a specific emotion to any part of the album in the same way you try to with a chorus or a melody, but again the task is beyond you. Obviously being memorable is the band's specialty, and as the album grinds its way through ten short-lived and delicate tracks it becomes all the more palpable.
This rings true on tracks like the unrepentant Beatles-rendition “Babies Don't Like Blue Anymore,” where lyrics are lifeless and trite with their clichés. Guitar lines are measly and forgettable, and the vocals are only memorable because they successfully remove any of the soul from the era which they're so unapologetically channeling into their sound. Again, a watered-down, synthetic version of '60s guitar rock is meshed with an austere and modernized folk sound on “Kumiko Song,” which would have been more trivial had it not been so inherently offensive. And it's not as though the band are pulling tricks out of their sleeves either on that track, they're rehashing the same, tired formula they honed on those aforementioned highlights with no success whatsoever. And even their triumphs are still the uninteresting tales of a band trying to find their footing in a field where everyone else already has.
