Like many records in my Top Ten this year, this tape’s title and approach raise an affirming two fingers to the flow of weak buzz-band fake-psych acts currently busy ruining the ‘P’ word for those of us who’ve been happily using it to describe actual, good music since time immemorial.

Unlike the other records in my Top Ten this year, this tape contains ten equally affirming songs by the most vital and self-determined bunch of chancers to hit the jangle/indie circuit in some time.

Back in March, I said:

“..dealing with the constituent components of this music, it’s difficult to put your finger on what makes City Yelps so pointedly removed from all the other nostalgia-nourishing jangly guitar types doing the rounds. From the 10th generation Byrds-y rattle to the strummy bass lines to the Hamish Kilgour type homemade-motorik drumming with that little ‘catch-up beat’ every four bars, it’s all here present and correct, all stuff you feel you’ll never, ever get sick of again when it’s banged out this splendidly. The playing is excellent & varied […] the recording is bright and the songs are simple and appealing, leaving only Shaun A’s parent-proof slurred bark (“thass not singing, I’m telling ya”, quoth some who should know better) and a strange, indefinable blanket of smudged, smothered otherness to explain why City Yelps sound so inherently separate from the mainstream, so alien to the streets of large population centres, so utterly and gloriously removed from anyone who deals in ego or money or music, so much of a potential OUR BAND (NOT THEIRS) moment for any/all scruffy, over-smart kids lucky enough to hear them.”

Nine months later, sufficiently calmed down, that questionable sense of identification with this music and its makers remains intact. My band, not theirs. Maybe yours?

Listen and buy from City Yelps.

Labels: best of 2014, City Yelps