The Beat Surrender

Yeti are a band that i’ve been banging on about for a couple of years now and this debut album from the band (excluding there Japanese only one in Yume!) is something i’ve really been looking forward to and anticipating for a while now.

I absolutely loved Never Lose Your Sense Of Wonder when it was released, likewise the limited EP that followed it and the brilliant single Don’t Go Back To The One You Love and it’s epic feel. I really did have high hopes for this album to be an absolute classic and all the signs were there that it would be, unfortunately though it falls short of being a classic, instead making do with being a good album.

A lot of the attention on Yeti has come on the back of John Hassall the former bass player with The Libertines, who unlike his more famous former bandmates has stayed out of the public eye, focused himself on only releasing music when it was at the quyality he wanted and has given his own band time to develop. You have to applaud him for that, it would have been easy to belt this album out in the first six months after they split and watched the money roll in, instead he’s done things on his terms and as a group they are better for it.

So much better for it in fact that despite the fact that this isn’t the classic i’d hoped for, it’s also a hundred times better than anything Carl Barat or Pete Doherty have produced since with their respective bands. It’s also worth remembering that this is a debut album, Yeti will grow and grow, i’m sure of that and with the ambition they show on some of the tracks it’s going to be a fascinating journey travelling with them through their development.

The two singles i’ve mentioned previously are both key to this album, they are possibly the two best tracks on here, although I have to say I love The Last Time You Go (6 Feet Under) and it’s jaunty feel, Jermyn Girls is another stand out track with some great melody and I love the lyrics of In Like With You. The one throw away track for me is the awful Shane Macgowan, a pointless ditty that could easily have sat as an extra track like the Star Wars meets Muppets track that is tagged onto the end of this album (possibly called Stay On Course Luke).

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