Review Summary: When the reaction to the album can be summarized by its title
Let’s skip the preamble.
Yes And… is the most toothless Scogin’s sounded thus far in his career, which is a damn shame because there are some cool ideas coming from ’68 this time around, ideas that pay off as often as not, but which never really coalesce into anything like ’68 at their full-fledged glory. Case in point that janky, uneven opener which combines both Scogins knack for making a clichéd turn of phrase its own little beast, those wild little dynamic flourishes that makes the best of his work such damn treat, a handful of half-baked ideas (including an intro riff that’s just half of If I was Your Vampire) and one of the most flaccid hooks that’s ever come out of this band. And there it is, you’ve got the album in a nutshell, as you get through some decent ideas that are just the right side of being stillborn before the big payoff, a payoff that feels almost perfunctory, as if you’re being expected to say time and time again
damn, Scogin can still bring it.
Which is all to say, if there’s anything you ever loved about that southern-fried yowl and the bluesy noise-rock of ’68 in their heyday, there will certainly be something appreciate here.
Yes And… is still far from a wash in the grand scheme of things, and Scogin’s still playing around with enough vocal tricks to make the dip in energy more of a tradeoff, his little yips and falsetto yowls providing enough pepper to keep you invested for the whole thing. But it isn’t just Scogin’s vocals that seem to be missing a bit of their old punch. His bluesy guitar roar is likewise just somehow a tad wilted, a bit less thought-out, and when it does bring the heat, it’s more an exercise in contrast against the limp blues that act as the setup for the big moments. The back half of Removed Their Hats ambles around some basic blues noodling and Scogin’s falsetto warbling before bursting back into the chorus with marginally similar intensity to what was being brought on
Two Parts Viper, a solid moment, but nothing that holds a candle to the peak of those albums. And Let’s Be Friends sounds like (for God’s sake) a Black Keys song sans their knack for hookwriting.
In brief, everything ‘68’s done here has pretty much been done by them before, and with much better results. Matters certainly aren’t helped by the muddied production, which when compared to
Two Parts Viper seemed hard to view as a deliberate decision. And while there’s a lot I can dig about this, there was never a moment where it didn’t feel that Scogin could have done it a little better, sunk his teeth into the material just a bit more. And that doesn’t even leave out those songs that could have been left on the cutting room floor, the above-mentioned Let’s Be Friends and the insipid They All Agreed ending up as near-total wastes of time that, while relatively brief, take up too much of the album’s already sparse runtime. We’ve all pretty much abandoned hope for that long-awaited Chariot reunion, but for the first time, Yes And… has me wondering if maybe that’s a good thing, if maybe that glorious blazing past should be left the stuff of legends. As it is, what we seem to be left with is just the hope that sooner or later Scogin and co. will be able to get back some of their old fury.
