Photos By: Summer Luu
By: Connor Cox
Last Wednesday Yuck performed at Soda Bar for a loyal audience in support of their third release Stranger Things.
Good news, everyone! We’re in the midst of the shoegaze revival. Shoegaze was never quite as popular in America as it was in England during the late 1980s, but one of the groups pioneering the genre’s comeback is Yuck, a four piece from London who sound like a hybrid of Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine.
Yuck is a rare breed. While most of their shoegazing predecessors are darker and melancholy (like Slowdive), Yuck is upbeat, youthful, and instantly nostalgic. In their recent work, Yuck built a sound that feels like a wave of distorted melodies, spacey vocals, and ambient noises. However, their live sound is more like garage band at a house party.
The evening’s 14 song setlist was evenly split between old material and new, and loaded with hard hitting anthems like “Get Away” and “Middle Sea”. It felt like the pace of the entire show was set at the rambunctious tempo of these two songs, with the exception of a few tamer songs like “As I Walk Away” and “Stranger Things”. Had there been more time, I would have loved to hear more songs from Glow and Behold.
If you weren’t familiar with the songs from Stranger Things, you were probably inspired to give it a spin when you got home. And if you were only casual fan of Yuck (like me) you probably left the showroom with their entire discography on vinyl in hand (like me.)