Drive Like Jehu - Yank Crime

Drive Like Jehu - Do You Compute?

Runs for: 7:13

Here is a prime example of being able to create something both evocative and noisy. 

Such a weird blend but much like that one time you tried putting the honey mustard on your meatball sub, it just works.

This one’s a little older than most of the albums I’ve reviewed. It’s one of the albums that I feel you really have to listen to before you die if you have any interest in music.

Drive Like Jehu were the second band to harbour the amazing Rick Froberg/John Reis rock duo. Together these two men have been in two other bands – Pitchfork prior to DLJ and Hot Snakes afterwards. Both of these bands are very good and incorporate some of the best guitar work I know. Drive Like Jehu themselves though have been credited as one of the earliest influences on the Emo genre before it was even conceived – despite the band themselves not being considered as ‘Emo’.

On their second and final release, Yank Crime, they opted to expand on their original post-hardcore sound, creating longer songs. Some of these were fast paced, some drawn out and emotive and some a mix of both moody rhythmic sections paired with distorted noise rock. These tracks came to lay out the foundation for certain progressive, hardcore and noise acts – one notable band who cites them as an influence are Canadian Noise-hardcore band Ken Mode, whom I believe are one of the best hardcore acts around at the moment (and are also deserving of more attention! GET ON THAT CORE HEADS FUCK!). Unfortunately the drawn out direction they took ultimately resulted in the death of the band with certain members (Reis if I’m correct?) getting fed up with the length and obscurity of the tracks. This ultimately led to Hot Snakes being created which wasn’t a bad thing though. Just wish they could have found a good balance…

Anyway, after a few listens you’ll be able to see why this album is held in high regard. The longer tracks on the album, ‘Do You Compute’ being my main case, are fucking brilliant at creating emotion through sound. The song starts off in what I’d call a slow, sort of airy fashion, but closer to the end it starts to become slow, ominous and brooding before leading up to a powerful, somewhat thundering finish. Sinews does something similar to this by creating a slow and somewhat broken atmosphere at the start but eventually leading into a pissed off thrash fest for distorted off-key guitar work. ‘Luau’, another one of the longer tracks, has a sort of thumping roll of a sound behind it. I listen to it when I’m walking and start strutting like a fucking boss.

The speedier tracks are pretty decent too, but I’ve always felt that the longer tracks were where this album shined. My reasoning behind this is that there’s a real feel of emotion or power that comes in those tracks that grabs the listener which the faster tracks lack. So many times I’ve sat around listening to one of the longer tracks and it’s struck me in a way that no other song really could – sometimes with a feeling of fire, inspiration or passion, and the faster tracks don’t do that. Instead the faster tracks I listen to when I’m more pissed off at something or playing games or some shit. They’re like small bursts of aggression. It’s all well constructed and decent – but after years of listening to these guys, I still can’t appreciate it like I do the longer tracks.

I’ve always felt that these guys have a signature way of throwing in weird, off key chords and notes whilst still sounding like a properly constructed song. The beauty of this is that it’s pretty subtle. The choruses, the rhythm sections in the songs will all sound good and I guess vaguely like a normal rock song – but behind it all, when you’re paying attention to what’s going on – there’s all sorts of crazy shit going on with the guitar with weird bent notes and all that other shit I mentioned before. They manage to incorporate this into all the songs, long or short, and like I said it all sounds perfectly normal.

What more’s to be said? These guys were around at a time where we were seeing a lot of decent post-hardcore (by that I mean the proper stuff, not those fuckheads who’ve spent more hours with a hair straightener than a musical instrument) and in some ways they helped set the future out for other bands in the field. If you’ve ever dabbled with bands like Fugazi, Unwound, maybe some of the older nineties bands, then this band should be in your library.

As a musician, I’ve taught parts of ‘Do You Compute’ to friends and we’ve been able to jam out some really interesting riffs just by playing those parts on repeat. Ken Mode’s song ‘Ahriman’ follows that same function and while they sound like two very different songs, just by listening closely you can detect the similarities in song structure. What I’m trying to say here is that by learning how to play these guys, you will get better at music. FACT.

So I guess I’ll summarise by saying the album is long, experimental at times and very musically emotive. It helped set the foundation for an entire genre of music, and I don’t believe these guys get the recognition they deserve.

Reccomended for: People who want to get all David Attenborough on the roots of emo music, Fans of noise music, fans of Unwound, Fugazi, maybe Sonic Youth and finally any other project Rick Froberg and John Reis were in. Also, most of all, musicians.

Drive Like Jehu - New Intro/New Math

Runs for: 3:32 - 4:06

These two are back to back on the album. The intro is slow, very mellow whilst new math itself is hard, angry and full of grit. A worthy pair right here.