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One of the brightest rays of light breaking through the grey indie skies during the turgid mid 1980s, Leicester’s YEAH YEAH NOH may not exactly have embodied the “dirt behind the daydream” the GANG OF FOUR once spoke of, but certainly represented the supposed stereotypical Normal Joes of suburbia; knocking off from a hard day at the office to tend the amphetamine laboratory that clutters the garden shed alongside the lawnmower.
And as the great “Leicester Square” retrospective collection makes abundantly clear, you only wish they’d continued to visit the weird, mezzanine levels between the everyday floors on life’s elevator, as the 20 tracks here form an essential bridging point (and introduction) to a very special back catalogue.
Burning briefly, but very brightly between the dawn of 1984 and February 1986, YEAH YEAH NOH were built around the creative nucleus of vocalist Derek Hammond, guitarist John Grayland, drummer Adrian Crossan and Sue Dorey’s Mo Tucker-style drumming. Critical favourites at the time (not least with the NME, my old mockers at “SOUNDS” and one J.Peel, esq.), the band only recorded one “official” LP, “Cutting The Heavenly Lawn Of Greatness…” (For IN TAPE in 1985 and a likely feature in our ongoing “ROCK HUNTER” series), but were also responsible for a run of essential EPs and three superb Peel Sessions, very sensibly plundered here.
Thing is, YEAH YEAH NOH were just so much better than most of the anaemic fare around at the time, not to mention the majority of the C86 underachievers that followed in their wake, and the 20 tracks comprising “Leicester Square” suggest that the creative sky was the limit here. Indeed, the three tracks from the “post-split” sessions (new to me) “Pink Green”, “Hands Up For Happiness” and “Chocolate River” showcase a slightly more muscular, but still very recognisable YYN sound from a line up featuring Derek, John, guitarist Tom Slater and long-time keyboard contributor Andy Nicholls that could logically have taken up the baton again.
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Naturally, just about everything here merits attention. There’s the spirited ‘n’ spindly beat group favourites “Cottage Industry”, “Stealing In The Name Of The Lord” and (yeah!) “Beware The Weakling Lines” (all together now: “East Fife five, Forfar four!”); the unashamed melancholy pop of the ace “Superimposed Man” (ah! Those “ba ba ba ba” backing vocals – bliss!), “Zoological Gardens” and ”Temple Of Convenience”, with that lazy, wigged-out slide guitar.
I could go on, but then we’d forget the neat line in attractive, low-rent psychedelia that YEAH YEAH NOH also excelled at. In fact the mighty trio of “Another Side To Mrs. Quill”, “Starling Pillowcase And Why” and “See Through Nature” (“my life’s nil, I just take pills”) are strange, phantastic and with Hammond’s ultra-deadpan vocals kicking in, quite probably the very finest things here.
There’s far more of course, not least groovy surprises like “Mr. Hammond Is Out To Lunch” – propelled by a “Batman”-style beat and Nicholls’ cool, Roy Budd organ squelches – and the Dick Dale-ish surf instrumental “Penetration”, but even these feel crucial to the plot rather than mere diversions.
So, while YEAH YEAH NOH’s acutely intelligent, post-beat group pop sound was always persuasive in bringing one to pillage the drawer marked ‘SUPERLATIVES’, “Leicester Square” graphically illustrates that their legacy has not faded one whit.
Still raging correctly, then. Absolutely no question
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