‘Anima Rising’ is the debut album from The Everlasting Yeah, a London based band featuring former members of That Petrol Emotion Reamann O’Gormain (guitars/vocals), Ciaran McLaughlin (drums/vocals), Brendan Kelly (bass/vocals) and Damian O’Neill (guitar/vocals). It’s their first official release and the first time that these musicians have recorded together in over 20 years.
‘Anima Rising’ sounds like nothing less than the product of a group of musicians having an absolute blast. What’s so impressive is that the band have managed to capture and bottle all those good vibes onto the record.
Sometimes when members of a band get back together they fail to recapture that earlier magic under a different banner.
That’s emphatically not the case here. Without doubt any TPE fan is going to find plenty to celebrate in these seven songs. In fact ‘Anima Rising’ would be a worthy sixth TPE album.
But really The Everlasting Yeah deserve to be heard on their own terms and, in any case, the Petrols never made a complete album which grooves in quite the way that ‘Anima Rising’ does.
The vibe here is far more rolling and loose, reflecting the fact that many of these songs were developed as jams in the studio.
As a consequence some stretch out in a way TPE rarely, if ever, did but rather than diminish the songs it’s quite thrilling when TEY have the confidence to kick right back into the groove from one of the false endings.
Opener ‘A Little Bit Of Uh-huh & A Whole Lotta Oh Yeah’ is a joyous distillation of what makes ‘Anima Rising’ so great. Built around a chant of the song’s title and some Stonesy guitars, it’s as exhilarating as anything from the Petrols back catalogue.
‘(Whatever Happened to the) Hoodlum Angels’ and ‘Taking That Damn Train Again’ best illustrate the extended approach with the former tapping into a little of the indie dance vibe of ‘Groovecheck’ and the latter a relentless juggernaut of a tune.
Melody remains a touchstone for TEY and there’s a couple which show us that TEY can be a great pop band. ‘New Beat On Shakin’ Street’ and ‘All Around The World’ fall into this category and would be obvious singles (even if the former is nearly 6 minutes long!) whilst ‘Everything’s Beautiful’ is a gentle ballad which is the equal of anything that their previous band did in a similar vein.
Whilst much of the record is intended to take you away from the worries of day to day life it would have been astonishing, given their background, if the Everlasting Yeah had completely ignored the reality of Coalition Britain.
The last track on the album, the remarkable, 12 and a half minutes long ‘The Grind’ is surely a lesson to today’s young careerist bands.
Meshing Krautrock with Sonic Youth its incendiary music and coruscating lyric (“Because all around us is a nightmare nation/ a demonocracy is what we’re facing”) demonstrates that TEY have reignited the fire from the best of their previous band.
Without doubt one of the albums of the year.
The Everlasting Yeah make their Scottish live debut at Stereo in Glasgow on Thursday 27th November. More info here. [Tickets]
Previously on itm?:
The Everlasting Yeah interview (October 2014)
Yuko Shimbo liked this on Facebook.
Am intrigued by this and will have to check them oot – saw TPE several times in the 80s and oh crumbs just seen date for Glasgow show, well we will see aboot that then…