The Yalla Yallas – The World At the End Of The World

The Yalla Yallas are back, after what seems like an eternity the new album has been born.  Three years forward from the last release What It Means To Be Human and the sixth studio album is now ready to be let loose, the background to this album is one of no live performances and members off doing other things from acting in the brilliant The Gallows Pole and marriage (Rob Galloway), playing in other bands, notably Guavan Dogs (Will Grinder / Vince Cayo).

The Yalla Yallas if your not familiar with them, are a band from West Yorkshire UK who are renowned for their incendiary live performances in particular, they play Rock ‘n Roll with a a tonne of life meaning and conscience thrown in for good measure, guitar, bass, drums and vocal performances that come alive with every beat, strum, pluck and breath taken. What this albums brings together more than any other release is the sense of family that makes up this bands life blood, Rob Galloway (Vocal, Guitar, Bass, Keyboard), Will Grinder (Guitar, Bass, Backing Vocal), Grant Henderson (Drums, Synth), Vince Cayo (Bass), David Holmes (Rebel Poet), Lisse Galloway (Vocals), Melanie Bam (Backing Vocal), Sam Thornton (Piano), Mathew Dempsey (Backing Vocal).

So what/where/whom are Yallas now?, this album is a coming of age, ‘Dream Out Loud (Parts 1,2 & 3)’ set us up nicely, a song that has introspective written all over it, dreams need to be acted upon whilst the dreams are still there, this is backed up by some pretty damn grown up musical story telling, a guitar that slides in and out like the narrator of the whole event is sublime.  If your looking for the old Rock n Roll angst that lived deep in most of the previous albums, its not quite as profoundly obvious here, this is a much more studied album lyrically and musically, ‘Reset’ which tells of a looking to escape from a life less wanted and a new beginning, this uses bass and keyboard/synth brilliantly to give it a dark and all together regretful feeling throughout. 

Listening through songs like ‘Down At The Zoo’ with its dark country blues undercurrent, ‘Drive Me Out Of town’ which uses an acoustic/electric mix to paint pictures in your mind, and ‘(Baby Baby) I love You’ which is almost Yallas of old but with a maturity of sound that makes it’s “love song” status so powerful that you can’t help feeling every single inch of its sincerity, this coupled with a stadium sound makes it unmistakably epic.  Then we get to the lead song from the album ‘Atomic Clock’ which takes us all the way back to a time when this band blew up the world with its fireball Rock n Roll.  Talking of “Its Rock n Roll” one of Robs favourite lines, is encompassed in every single breath of the song ‘Elvis (You Gotta Shake)’, a whole lotta everything going on here.

If I said Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Joe Strummer or Bob Dylan, I might be naming some pretty damn key players, but all these and more are somehow right at the heart of what this album feels like, a growing up, a looking back, but then a moving forward with a conviction that feels so right.  Musically you’d be hard pushed to find anything so wonderfully raw and so top of its game, every song is packed full of nuances, but damn this album packs a punch.

Out now via The Yalla Yallas

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