Reviewed by Eric Saeger
Someday, the Royal Potato Family company is going to own Bonnaroo. You can always count on friendly, distinctly American, blatantly flawed records from them, like this spinoff LP from Apollo Sunshine’s Sam Cohen. Yellowbirds are from Boston, so there’s some Berklee-drop out guitar solos that absolutely blow doors, and they’re also, like I said, Bonnaroo bait, so although they profess a love for Roy Orbison, it’s a love tempered by a pressing need to impress Pitchfork and stuff, so there’s as much terrible melody as good stuff, like random decent hayloft-indie and Strawberry Alarm Clock ideas thrown in a transmodulator along with some Everly Brothers albums and Julian Casablancas’s sense of who-cares. Closeout track ‘The Reason’ may be the suckiest song I’ve ever heard, if that helps any.
Grade: C
