The terrific new yea yea EP from Missoula trio (latent) starts cheerily enough, but quickly nosedives into the apocalypse.
Opening track “lucky cigarette” finds frontman Jake Swank partying merrily with his pals before—whoops—he falls, bludgeoning his head on a desk. Backed by muted guitars and plodding percussion, and delivered in a subdued dead-pan, the scene conveys a healthy dose of foreboding.
And soon enough, that creeping sense of SNAFU escalates into full-on chaos. In the second verse, Swank’s straight-faced narrator morphs into a monster (the grimacing face that graces the EP’s cover comes to mind), howling his way through a noisy storm of crashing drums and feedback, lost in a horror that, he moans, could be “nervousness or psychosis.” I’d be lying if I said it didn’t scare the shit out of me the first (or tenth) time I heard it.
“Lucky cigarette” is emblematic of what’s to come. Throughout yea yea’s five concise tracks, Swank’s potent, shape-shifting voice takes center stage. He possesses a gift for understated melodies that can get lodged in your ear for days. His brittle guitar collides with Zachary Buchholz’s sturdy bass lines and Nick Togliatti’s walloping drums. Together they create an exuberant and tightly-controlled cacophony that brings to mind a range of lo-fi rockers from Pavement and Chavez to early Modest Mouse.
The spirit of Nirvana also looms large over much of yea yea. “scratching sores,” for one, encapsulates Kurt Cobain’s bitter angst. Later, “grunting mass” and “fool” both channel Nirvana’s penchant for revved-up, melodic choruses, albeit sung in a drastically less nasally voice.
Despite yea yea’s manic energy, it saves its fiercest sentiment for its quietest moment. In the final minute of closing track “fool,” Swank switches to an acoustic guitar, strumming sparingly, and his bandmates drop out. “The fool for love is never sane,” he sings in a stately tone, more Lenoard Cohen than Isaac Brock.
The three gents that make up (latent) have been playing together for nearly a decade, but yea yea marks the group’s first release. Nonetheless, it captures the sound of a band with a fully-formed sense of identity, and overflows with rich ideas. I’d venture it was worth the wait.
