New Choons: Hebronix - 'Unreal'

I liked Yuck's first album. I liked it a lot. At that moment in time it was incredibly refreshing to hear an indie band who weren't afraid of distortion pedals, especially when the songwriting team of guitarist Max Bloom and singer Daniel Blumberg could seemingly do no wrong. However the band were always haunted by two factors, firstly their age (with band members barely having reached their 20th birthdays) and their heart on sleeve influences that gave the music press a field day with taglines like 'The Teenage Teenage Fanclub', 'Dinosaur Jr Jr', 'Sonic Youthful' and several more awful puns. Perhaps that is the reason, to the shock of many, that Blumberg left the band (as was revealed earlier this month). The band announced they would be going to New York to record their Sophomore album as a 3-piece whilst Daniel would not join them as he had 'decided to focus on other things'. Days later Blumberg (probably sooner than intended) revealed his new project Hebronix and that an album entitled "Unreal" would be released this July. With this came a stream of a new track, also titled "Unreal".

From the get go its familiar territory. Like a more delicate moment on Yuck's debut LP, "Unreal" mixes Blumberg's signature whine with spindly spaced out guitars that wind the song into a steadily expansive affair almost resembling the dreamy psych pop of The Verve's early days, in particular the song "Slide Away". Its not a million miles away from Blumberg's former solo project Oupa, its just that the piano has been replaced with guitars. With lyrics like "Been sleeping for hours" and "I feel so unreal", its once again, you guessed it, signature Blumberg. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, personally it just makes me wonder why he's quit Yuck. Unless Max Bloom, the debut album's sole musical writer (Blumberg was lyricist), is taking the band in a drastically different direction, this song would have probably fit in seamlessly with the band's back catalogue. It's probably wrong to expect something wildly different but "Unreal" is a lacklustre outing in my eyes, hopefully what Yuck have to offer later this year will be more exciting. The album "Unreal" will be available July 8th on ATP Recordings.

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Upcoming Tour Dates:
Birmingham Glee Club (April 24)
Manchester Central Methodist Hall (25)
Gateshead The Sage (26)
Glasgow Classic Grand (27)
Bristol Trinity Centre (29)
London Barbican Centre (30)