Superb Dutch indie-rock brimming with chiming, jangling guitars and great songs.
Based in Utrecht, The Yearlings previously featured here with their highly regarded 2018 album, ‘Skywriter’. Their latest album, ‘After All the Party Years’ looks set to do even better. Opening track, ‘Medicine Ball’, eases in with a slow fade, before exploding into the chiming guitar arpeggios that feature throughout the album. A steady insistent drum beat underpins swirling slide guitars and the track is overlaid with excellent vocals and subtle but evocative vocal harmonies. The track is swathed in delicate delays and reverbs that all contribute to the dreamy effect.
Over a long career, the band have sometimes been compared to REM or The Jayhawks, and there’s definitely a hint of Teenage Fanclub throughout this album, but this is a band that surely must have been listening to Rain Parade’s ‘Emergency Third Rail Power Trip’ and the rest of LA’s much-loved Paisley Underground scene of the 1980s.
Next track, ‘Blistering Clouds’, backs off some of the reverbs and delays but shifts the focus to the arpeggiated guitars, acoustic guitar and some nicely placed piano, harmonica and again some lovely vocal harmonies. There’s a lot going on here – all of it good – but it’s never distracting from the main vocal and a memorable melody.
‘At My Table’, reveals how these R.E.M. comparisons might well have come to stick. There’s something of a Peter Buck flavour across all the tracks, but some nice organ playing on this track really does bring the great R.E.M. to mind, and that’s never a bad thing.
The Yearlings have been playing together since 1999, disbanding in 2006, before reforming ten years later in 2016 and going from strength to strength. Niels Goudswaard and Olaf Koeneman share the main vocals and make key contributions on acoustic and electric guitars. Bertram Mourits handles slide guitar, pedal steel and keyboards, with latest recruit, Martijn Vink, also on guitar. The line-up is completed by Herman Gaaff on bass and Léon Geuyen on drums, backing vocals.
‘After All the Party Years’ features ten fine songs and the playing and the production is faultless throughout. It’s hard to pick out specific tracks when they are all so strong, but album closer ‘Torn Bags of Asian Takeout’ captures the album’s strengths: excellent vocals with the track building through some lovely guitar solos, some excellent organ work and some fabulous slide guitar soaring into wailing feedback just before it all fades out.
Some naysayers might say that The Yearlings aren’t doing anything especially new or original, but that would seem particularly harsh in the face of how creatively and cleverly they are carving out their own take on a familiar and much-loved sound. Fans of alt.country or Americana will surely find something to enjoy in this album, but if the sounds of the Paisley Underground or early R.E.M. are your thing… dive in!
