Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 03/26/1993
Run Time: 40:36
Music dictated not by logic but by intuition,
Yerself Is Steam is an album at war with itself, split by its desire to achieve both melodic pop bliss and white-noise transcendence within the same space; it succeeds brilliantly, avant-bubblegum fuel injected by fits and flourishes of prismatic chaos. From the comic malevolence of
David Baker's mad-scientist creations to
Jonathan Donahue's opiate lullabies,
Yerself Is Steam is vividly cinematic -- between the roller coaster feedback of
"Coney Island Cyclone" and the narcoleptic ebb and flow of the climactic
"Very Sleepy Rivers," the songs perfectly evoke their titular aspirations; likewise, from the album title (say it out loud) onward, the lyrics revel in the quirks and idiosyncrasies of language, buoyed by a homophonous prankishness and dada rhyme schemes, which, in their own odd way, suggest a kind of poetry. A near-perfect debut from a band that would only get better from here on out. [The American edition appends the superb single
"Car Wash Hair," while some foreign releases include the bonus disc
Lego My Ego, a crazy quilt knitted together from unlikely covers (
Sly Stone's
"If You Want Me to Stay," Miles Davis'
"Shhh/Peaceful"),
Peel Sessions highlights, and wonderfully loopy studio chatter.]
~Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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