Go Tell Fire To The Mountain is the new album by WU LYF, the now legendarily mysterious mancunians. Either this just caught me in exactly the right mood or it’s one of the best songs I’ve heard in ages.
The track below’s called Spitting Blood on the new album, although seems to have an alternate title of Spitting It Concrete Like The Golden Sun God – ignore the Youtube title though as it doesn’t appear anywhere else.
Even the video’s outstanding, according to NME it prompted Michel Gondry to start cold-calling the band to find out more about them! (Just for the record, I’m not a regular reader of NME – just tried Googling these guys to find out who they were. Glad we’ve cleared that one up)
WU LYF, or to give them their full name, World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation have eshewed the attentions of some of the coolest record labels around to put out their debut independent of a single distributor, and retaining the rights to it (as far as I can work out from their website!)
They do appear to be the darling of every muso magazine and blogger around, but at least they sound like they have staying power. The music certainly seems to have a lot more depth than many of the overhyped and ruthlessly promoted bands in the likes of The Guardian. The voice & guitars remind me of Pere Ubu a tad, which may explain the excitement from all the thirtysomething music reviewers.
Well whatever whatever, give this a listen and hopefully smile…
I also reviewed the album for Blog Critics – feedback very welcome!
—–8<----- WU LYF (aka World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation) initially appeared to be an enigma of uncertain origin. Only one band photo was released, where they looked like a hipster, anarchist cult, gathered by a fire in a car park, ready for some rolling skirmishes with some riot police. The band have retained their independence, self-recorded their first album, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain, and did not sign with any of the labels who have been falling over themselves to recruit them. Instead, they have a distribution deal with Universal Music Publishing. Music reviewers, however, have been getting exercised about whether WU LYF really is a DIY, garage phenomenon, or if they’re actually backed by a cleverly presented marketing campaign. After all, their manager has been revealed as Warren Bramley, founder of advertising firm four23.
Go Tell Fire To The Mountain eases listeners in with the calm organ build up of “L Y F”. As with most of the album, there is an underlying tension to the song, with the lyrics being delivered in yelped bursts like early Modest Mouse. It seems likely the L Y F of this song stands for “Love You Forever” as that becomes the main refrain of the song, and the video they released ends with the same phrase delivered by Tupac Shakur. They come back to the same words later in the album on the track “Dirt” which closes with a rowdy looping chorus of ‘World Unite / Love You Forever’.
The second track released by WU LYF, complete with a video, was called “Spitting It Concrete Like The Golden Sun God” (called simply “Spitting Blood” on the album). According to the NME, the combination of music and video with this release prompted Michel Gondry to start cold-calling the band to find out more.
The LP was recorded in a church and the album is inspired by weightier issues than most indie pop. Subverted religious iconography and political protests feature prominently in WU LYF videos and their website. And, across all the media they produce, they present a youthful dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Their sound and shows give them the air of lazy revolutionaries, with lyrics steeped in elemental references (it doesn’t stop with the album title) and the language of ‘protest folk’ railing against some sort of abstract societal oppression. The lyrics of “Dirt” again seem to reflect the album and indeed band in microcosm, ‘The fire starts / Can you hear the sound? / Of the kids all calling / I won’t hold this crown’.
Despite trying to communicate some weighty concepts, the whole album retains an upbeat, danceable tempo. Most tracks in fact follow a similar tempo for the verses, with the beat knocking off to half pace to give an epic feel to either bridge or chorus, which becomes somewhat predictable, while still affecting.
Early single “Concrete Gold” has this trademark slowed down chorus with Pixies-era Frank Black / Isaac Brock barks typically littering the song. The vocals eventually descend into an unstructured chorus of chants that seem to only loosely relate to the backing music, generating a pleasant dissonance, which is another recurring theme of the album.
One of the striking vibes of the LP is the apparent camaraderie of the band, which is also reflected in titles like “We Bros” and played out in the compelling and catchy singalong choruses that also reflect despair and subversion. The overall effect is like polished versions of Pere Ubu or The Teardrop Explodes songs, but delivered with gruff, barely distinguishable vocals and with a ramshackle Jonathan Fire*Eater-esque rhythm-led backing.
Throughout the 10 tracks of this debut, WU LYF never seem to fully let rip. There is always a strange sense of control to the music, even when the vocals try to soar. It’s a great debut from a young band, but I really hope their sophomore efforts will be wilder.
If the vampire gang from The Lost Boys ever formed a band, they’d sound like this when they played the town hall. But I want to hear how they sound when they’re playing just for the bats in their cave.
That’s not Tupac at the end of ‘L Y F’, it’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard 😉
Ah, so you spotted my deliberate mistake 😉 Thanks for posting that. You could easily have pointed out that the band is called *WU* Lyf, probably for a reason?!