By Ben Palmer
Mother nature’s tech-savvy sister gave birth to YAWN, a young band of four twenty-somethings (including two Lane grads) trying to make their musical and visual mark.
Although they may be “too indie for you to have heard of them,” YAWN has been gaining a following through the web. The band’s music has the catchiness of pop, the alternative feel of MGMT, and the music-video feel of OK Go.
The song Kind of Guy, about which band members George Perez and Sam Wolf spoke to Lane’s TV Broadcast class, sounds like a slightly off-beat experimental pop song. The music video, on the other hand, is a meditation VHS that melts into a cosmic glow-stick puppet show. On LSD.
The use of bright colors, trippy transitions, and chromatic kaleidoscope space scenes is enough to give anyone horrific drug flashbacks. However, the band insisted to the prying students that drugs are in no way a theme in their work.
“Most of our videos are really trippy,” Perez responded to the questions. “But whenever music videos have stuff flashing, people say it’s drug-related.”
“We’re more catchy than trippy,” Wolf insisted.
Most of the songs, like Toys, make use of digital enhancement in terms of background sounds and instruments. The band successfully avoids the overuse of these disguises and never loses the glory of a good melody and interesting lyrics. Despite what some could see as symbolic or deeply thematic lyrics, Wolf admits that “lyrics are always an afterthought…which is probably a bad thing.”
Fun fact: The lyrics for Kind of Guy have nothing to do with space, drugs, or color-orgies. They are, in fact, about Wolf’s cat.
YAWN’s songs are honestly quite fun to listen to. If you’ve ever wanted to be the first of your friends to know about a band, this is the band to know about.
Gasoline (off their album Open Season) has a classic guitar riff with a sort of beach-y rock/pop rhythm. The vocals are consistently smooth throughout their songs, allowing them to be relaxing background music while hanging out. The melodies and rhythms are, however, good enough to be the center of attention, and I’d have no problem if a song by YAWN came up on shuffle during a party.
Regarding the videos, I’d like to say that Kind of Guy was an isolated incident. The band acknowledges, however, that it enjoys making videos that fit their busy music.
“We have a lot wind sounds, water sounds, and trees,” said Wolf. “It’s very visual, and [the directors] represent that.”
While discussing a music video in the classroom, Mr. Maslanka came to a realization of some semi-graphic symbolism in the Kind of Guy video.
“Ohhh…that was going through the birth canal?”
“Yeah,” replied Perez,” That’s why we had it dripping with all the fluids.”
This raw energy and ability to experiment with sound and image is perhaps the key to YAWN’s success, as it is competing in a new music market which relies on downloads. The band admits to living off of T-shirt and CD sales, as well as money from gigs. They make all of their music easily available online so as to get out there more.
“It’s more about touring and festivals than about being at a good label,” said Wolf of the band’s business strategy. “Some artists get by at labels but it’s really about touring.”
The band has toured Europe, played at South by SouthWest in Austin, and will soon start a west coast tour including Vancouver, Seattle, and LA. YAWN will be opening for the Cooks.
Open Season and YAWN E.P. are available for download on iTunes, as are their singles.
