The second LP of Minnesota’s Yuasa-Exide starts off with a thrusting burst of fuzzed-out catchy mid-tempo punk channeling a mix of mid-fi era Guided By Voices, the more power pop-ish ends of the Bevis Frond universe and a slight hint of Eric’s Trip or classic-era Dinosaur Jr. to boot in the opening track The Picture You Painted, just to increasingly and deliberately destabilize the sonic landscape on subsequent tracks. Their tunes and arrangements based somewhere inbetween the realms of ’80s to ’90s indie- and college rock, Flying Nun Records-style psychedelia and busy C86-ish strummery gain a more shambolic, hazy and surreal quality, always in acute danger of falling apart at the seams. Yet, quite wondrously, the looming sword of damocles never seems to strike, the tunes somehow always maintain their fragile equilibrium. The ability to pull that shit off already kinda struck me as their superpower on the previous Hyper At The Gates Of Dawn LP released earlier this year and i think it holds even more true here, a rare quality i previously found in early works by the likes of Rat Columns and The Molds over a decade ago and, maybe, the comparatively straightforward Psych Pop nuggets of Blank Realm’s 2014 Grassed In LP which, then again, brings us back full circle on the aforementioned Flying Nun vibes.
