Drive Like Jehu - Yank Crime

(click on album picture to download)

Drive Like Jehu Yank Crime
1994
Interscope Records
VBR

(red text = sample track)

1 Here Come the Rome Plows 5:44
2 Do You Compute 7:12
3 Golden Brown 3:14
4 Luau 9:27
5 Super Unison 7:24
6 New Intro 3:32
7 New Math 4:06
8 Human Interest 3:24
9 Sinews 9:12

Spin (7/94, p.73) - "...a show-stopper--a fresh reminder that cutting-edge guitar rock still needs gnarls to transcend..."
Alternative Press (8/94, p.78) - "...The result is an album that the truly technically proficient, cool-as-cake musician, or environmentally artistic producer will enjoy..."
Magnet (p.69) - "[A]n explosive tangle of careening tempo changes, hoarse-throated vocals, barely contained guitar histrionics and mindful aggression."
NME (Magazine) (6/11/94, p.33) - 8 - Excellent - "...Jehu are solid, compact and monstrously tight....YANK CRIME has a deeply masochistic appeal, delivering raging chaos with a military precision...."

The band's second and, unfortunately, final album, Yank Crime is as worthy and awesome as its predecessor, losing not a jot in the change from independent to major label status. Including some longer, more complex tunes this time around, Drive Like Jehu is otherwise essentially unchanged, fusing brawling, crisp rhythms and high volume intensity with technical complexity, feeling like a mad science experiment gone completely out of control. Aside from the guest backing vocals on the frazzled angst explosion "Luau!" by fellow San Diego music fiend Rob Crow, it's again all down to the band's four members, with drummer Trombino providing the strong, take-no-prisoners mix. Perhaps even more than the debut, Yank Crime solidified Drive Like Jehu's reputation as kings of emo. While use of that term rapidly degenerated to apply to sappy miserableness by the decade's end, here the quartet capture its original sense, wired, frenetic, screaming passion, as first semi-created by the likes of Rites of Spring. Whether making it short and sweet, as the surprisingly gentle instrumental "New Intro" demonstrates in three minutes, or taking time, like the nearly ten-minute conclusion "Sinews," the band wastes not a note. Froberg's sense of intense, almost accusatory delivery is astonishingly dramatic throughout, whether in full cry or with a touch of restraint, as on the rhythmic chorus of "Do You Compute." His guitar partnership with Reis is still in full cry, creating honestly epic zoned and screaming feedback roars and waves -- the aforementioned "Do You Compute" is one fine example, as is "Luau!," which builds to a awe-inspiring, eternally ascending rise. While a recording of the band's incendiary live shows would be the best way to remember the quartet, Yank Crime is a thoroughly excellent if unexpected way to bow out, artistic rock that actually, honestly, and totally rocks.

- All Music Guide