Review Summary: Yeule chooses life, sweetens up their sound, and drops pop AOTY for the third time running.
After two albums of waif-like shimmerings steeped in dissociation and depression, it’s almost shocking to hear what a difference a brighter outlook and apparent stability have made for Yeule. Dubbed a healing record, their latest effort
softscars surfaces triumphantly from the traumatic nadir documented only last year on the masterpiece
Glitch Princess, kicking down the walls of bedroom space within its opening seconds and brimming with sunlight from thereon out. Opener “x w x” elicits one sharp exhalation after another with its howling guitars and walls of shrieks, as cathartic as anything Yeule has made, but a good deal less morbid; the track’s breakneck pacing and tearaway energy are an unsustainable rush, yet its momentum seems to grasp outward rather than cave inward. So it goes for the rest of the album: these songs embrace life head-on, and while they are hardly reticent to explore uncomfortable subject matter (“software update” features a particularly bruising set of images), there’s a new confidence behind it that never feels anything less than affirmative. Lead single “sulky baby” eschews angst entirely in a leisurely swoon; the one-two album highlight of “inferno” and “bloodbunny” splits the atom with monosyllabic chants, each utterance a glimpse at the kind of intimate emotional sanctuary few would open to the world; late-game banger “cyber meat” cranks the album’s exuberance to hyperactive heights and throws down a barrage of lyrical calling cards that, for perhaps the first time, scan less as do-or-die performative self-manifestations, and more as simple acts of playfulness. It’s astonishing how luridly Yeule maps the cracks in their own mental health across the album, yet I can hardly imagine anyone else radiating so much joy and vitality at every turn in doing so. They confront largely the same demons as ever with vast newfound strength, and to call
softscars ‘cleansing’ as such would be a gross understatement.
This is all the more remarkable for how the record showcases their most cohesive
and potentially most versatile stylistic palette to date. Returning fans will find the likes of “softscars”, “ghosts” and “bloodbunny” full of familiar glitchy flourishes, and “inferno” within a stone’s throw of
Serotonin II’s understated reveries, but there’s a much more ‘physical’ presence to the music here. Yeule delivers their least modulated vocal tracks to date and complements their ultra-digital production with a full arsenal of guitars: the verses of “software update” and “aphex twin flame” are practically unplugged by their usual standards, while “dazies”’ rollicking shoegaze and “software update”’s clamorous bridge both play like a fresh vitalisation of the dissociated plug-in warfare landmarked by the
Downfall of the Neon Youth e-rock crowd. The heft and concrete presence of these fresh touches are entirely appropriate given the flush in this album’s cheeks and the rush of blood in its veins. I’ve seen “ghosts”’ zany verses and lilting climax compared to the classic refrain of Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl”, a superficially accurate similarity that touches a deeper theme: that Yeule now packs the same warmth as perhaps the most infamously maximalist hugs-and-smiles collective in music tells you all you need about the level they’re operating on at this point. Lord knows where they’ll go from here.
