The bright-eyed lads from Brisbane, Yves Klein Blue have finally returned from abroad, holding aloft the shining bounty of their wanderings. Ragged & Ecstatic their debut album.
I really like this album. First track Make Up Your Mind is a straight kick to your guts, in a nice way. With jingly piano hooks, catchy ethereal guitar hooks and an oddly Caribbean feel to it, the songs is stand up and 80s dance material.
Next tracks Soldier and Getting Wise keep things in the same up beat poppy rock interlaced with varying other influences from The Beatles to part of surf and punk. There is generous use of uplifting overdubs, and the always-happy piano riffs and clean guitar effects.
Most of the songs follow a solid verse chorus verse structure, with the mix making way for the vocals to shine through. Essentially for the most part it’s carefree pop, with irrepressible drive and earnest vocals all tied up quite neatly.
The band’s got balls but they keep them shaved, not to say though that the album doesn’t have it’s fair share of hairy bits.
Tracks like Digital Love (miles away from the Daft Punk song of the same name), allow the band to unleash their grunge-laden fury. The guitar effects that once were clean are nor covered in shit and mud and flying at you in surges and swell.
About The Future and its counterpart Reprise see singer Michael Tomlinson’s vocals presented over a single guitar playing a charmingly quirky blue number. The songs see Michael musing about the state of the world, with particular emphasis on the fact that in this world we’re really only presented with a choice of which of two evils is the lesser. Reprise does however seem to resolve the pain and anguish of About The Future, the lyrics implying an acceptance of our fate to suffer through the shit those before us have left so that in the future we may be able to look toward improving our world as opposed to relying on quick fixes to keep us afloat.
Summer Sheets is a wondrously ska influenced pop ditty, while Polka revisits the thrashy rockabilly of Digital love with even more fury than before. Queeny has this sort of airy Britpop edge to it and it reminds of something Damon Albarn might sample for a Gorillas track.
The whole album is pretty fun really will make for a good soundtrack to a dirty coke fuelled weekend of excess.
Here’s hoping the next one’s even better than this.
7/10
Buy Yves Klein Blue – Ragged & Ecstatic on 
