Albums Catch-Up:
Yeh Deadlies –
The First Book of Lessons
(Popical Island)

Creators of one of my favourite singles of 2010, Dublin’s Yeh Deadlies have come to occupy a pretty unique space in my current listening habits. Just as I was completely excising from my life the possibility of enjoying earnest, painstakingly well-produced folksy indie featuring lots of harmony vocals, xylophones, proper middle eights, literate big-hearted lyrics and so on, along comes a band proffering earnest, painstakingly well-produced folksy indie featuring lots of harmony vocals, xylophones, proper middle eights, literate big-hearted lyrics and so on (EPSWPFIFLHVXPM8LBHLetc, if you will), that I really, really like.

And, I mean, I usually have a kneejerk hatred of this stuff these days, so it stands to reason that all you guys out there who still have a lot of time for EPSWPFIFLHVXPM8LBHLetc should REALLY dig Yeh Deadlies, and make them at least sorta-famous so that they can get booked by Ear Your Own Ears and come to London to do “ ‘ proper’ ” shows in big venues with security guards on the door and an awful, murky sound mix.

It may already be a totally played out comparison that I probably used the last time I wrote about Yeh Deadlies, but they give me a feeling similar to early Herman Dune, back when they were still real special. Not that there’s much similarity musically of course – “The First Book of Lessons” is full of keyboards and gentle fuzz guitar and lively chord changes and ‘80s pop influences and all sorts of other things far removed from the erstwhile ‘Dune playbook – but they share the same… I dunno - intent? atmosphere? whatever. Come on in and relax, these songs seem to say (without getting too happy-clappy about it), everybody’s welcome. Maybe life’s not perfect – in fact we are going to tell you in lyrical form about all manner of awkward situations and personal upsets - but the sun’s shining and it’s a quiet afternoon and we’re all on the same page here, so grab a pint and we’ll weave our merry tunes for ya.

And fucking merry they are too, full of great, interesting melodies and attention-grabbing little musical bits and pieces, and they tell us about a bunch of stuff that’s maybe taken from their lives or maybe just made up, and for once you actually care. As Yeh Deadlies have moved away from the more overtly folky approach of their earlier recordings and assumed the mantle of a full electric pop band, joint singers/writers Padraig and Annie have correspondingly developed a real knack for cramming odd and personal details into the songs whilst never letting them meander too far from their core function as strong, emotionally resonant pop songs. Most song lengths remain on the right side of three minutes, tempos remain upbeat, and collapses into diary entry banality are strenuously avoided, but each number still succeeds in communicating the essence of a situation, an idea, a feeling, whatever. So, uh, I’m no expert or anything, but I think that probably adds up to official Real Good Song-Writing. Well done everybody!

Although Dublin is a big city, this really sounds like a rural album to me. Or it really hit the spot when I put it on whilst barrelling through the countryside last month, at least. Maybe I’m just projecting, but the songs seem to pull together to create an agreeable picture of life in a small-ish provincial music scene, from the reflections of a DJ at a small town club night surveying the 3am carnage in “Disc Jockey Blues” to the tale of a kid growing up and joining a band in, er, “The Kid’s in the Band”, and so on.

If “The First Book of Lessons” was a movie, I think it would probably be one of those ‘90s British indie movies where young people in brightly coloured clothes live amid drab, dilapidated surroundings, and they go to transport cafes, and go surfing, and sit together on the cliffs and stuff like that. Hopefully it wouldn’t be shite (because most of those kind of movies were shite), but y’know what I mean.

In a field submerged ‘neath a flood of bilious careerists and terminal hat-wearers, Yeh Deadlies sound like good people playing good music, and that’s really something to be thankful for.

“No Rock n Roll Dreams (in Empty Beds)” and “The Present Perfect” are some of my favourite songs on the album, so here are Soundclouds of them;




The whole album can be streamed or purchased from http://yehdeadlies.bandcamp.com/, and you can learn all about Popical Island at http://popicalisland.tumblr.com/About.

Labels: album reviews, Yeh Deadlies