Weekly Release Spotlight: Wu Lyf
Posted on 9/11/2011
Wu Lyf
Go Tell Fire to the Mountain
L Y F Recordings
Go Tell Fire to the Mountain
L Y F Recordings
It almost seems like WU LYF have been written about more than they've been listened to, which is just the way things seem to go now. That's not a shot at the alternative media, being fascinated by this Manchester based quartet is more than understandable. Rejecting interviews from everyone most of the time, deleting their own Wikipedia page, self recording in a church, taking fan calls from Michel Gondry, you can ignore their music entirely and still consider these guys to be a major force in independent music this year.
Ignoring WU LYF's music would be difficult though. Not because their debut Go Tell Fire to the Mountain is wholly original or the work of musical trailblazers, because excepting some lyrical breakthroughs and vocal experimentation, it isn't. Still, Go Tell sometimes feels thankfully inescapable due to its scope. This record is big. That might sound a little juvenile, but at times so does WU LYF. Besides, there is really no way around it. What makes this album notable and exciting is that it is just very big.
Many seem to believe that this enormity is the product of the back-asswards, mysterious branding the band seems to have mastered somehow. WU LYF is an acronym for World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation, which rolls off the tongue just as easily as Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, and probably has had a similar congealing effect on its listeners. But too much stock is being put in the power of the mystique they've cultivated so well. Too much of the band's success is being attributed to their elusiveness and oddities, and that feels like a disservice to the truly impressive achievement that Go Tell Fire to the Mountain is. Upon hearing the band's name, my mom asked, "What happened to band names like the Mamas & the Papas?" Obviously, I never expected my mom to join the Lucifer Youth Foundation, but I would expect her, or anybody who has heard this album to realize that it is young, vital, sincere and exciting. And don't forget big.
Many people have joined that devoted throng, though. Online lyrics pages, usually supplied by the fans themselves, for this album are numerous, complete and accurate, which is surprising considering that frontman Ellery James Roberts's howl borders on completely incoherent throughout the entire album.
Pitchfork called this voice the "vocal embodiment of animal instinct," which isn't far off, but feels like a stretch. Roberts's vocal talents are absolutely commendable and one of the best things about this record, what he is actually doing is switching from one charted territory to another, with passion and command. Several times on the album, I thought that if Kings of Leon had not realized their commercial appeal and streamlined their already tame sound, frontman Anthony Followill's scratchy whine could have evolved into something as stinging and guttural as Roberts's.
Don't let that comparison be the one that sticks with you though. The band that surrounds Roberts have mastered various, seemingly disparate musical techniques and aesthetics, and have interwoven them seamlessly throughout. The stutter-step drum rolls and enduring reverence of Explosions in the Sky are evoked in "Cave Song". This interspersed with Surfer Blood-esque clean and focused melodic noodling on the outro of "We Bros" and a harmonica thrown against a clangy guitar line on "Heavy Pop," the same way Clap Your Hands Say Yeah did on their self-titled debut. And while these comparisons can be drawn rather quickly, the music is so well integrated that it never feels derivative.
Symbols of blood, crowns and fire run throughout Go Tell, but it is at its most lyrically fascinating, when it doesn't try so hard.The same way Craig Finn finds God while retelling his best drunk stories, Roberts searches for something universal and human within today's laziest slang. "We bros! You lost man! / We bros so long!" is the culminating chant of the album's triumphant centerpiece. "He said he's gonna be / Shorty's gonna be a thug," the final lines of "Such a Sad Puppy Dog" bring a vague tragedy to the song that makes it as sad and affecting as the title would suggest.
Still, the overriding quality of Go Tell Fire to the Mountain is joy. A joy that comes directly from the music itself, not from the image, or non-image, WU LYF has created for itself. A joy that persists even when surrounded by despair. A joy that is like everything else on this album: big.
Stream: "Spitting Blood"