Yonaka are a wave of emotions on their new EP.
From a near standing start, the number of women fronting rock bands has now almost reached the stage where it no longer matters – or at least that it matters less to the people who actually matter.
Now reduced to a trio after the departure of drummer Rob Mason, Brighton’s Yonaka are led by Theresa Jarvis, and on the final track of their new EP Welcome to My House, she sounds absolutely pissed.
‘I will not suffer under any man’s voice’, she opens with on Hands Off My Money, ‘So lower your tone when you’re talking to me/I ain’t asking for much but R-E-S-P-E-C-T’.
The song starts with a scream and runs along at street-shout tempo, the same kind of ranting ruckus which has made the Nova Twins one of the 20’s early scene stealers.
Processing that with its half dozen companions, there’s a deliberate lack of continuity, Welcome To My House conceived by the band as a umbrella on which they can experiment by placing themselves at either ends of their comfort zone.
The results are breathless: opener By The Time You’re Reading This – written appropriately about living in the moment – scuds along with an all-gas-no-brakes intensity, whilst PANIC immediately flips, the jittering, FOMO-racked, very online subject of over sharing from behind a screen of distorted words and hyped-up riffs.
Maybe the lack of consistency is a response to the toxicity of the sliding left and right distractions that are our lives, but here Yonaka are very clearly using this burning platform to reach for bigger things.
On the title-track Jarvis drops her voice into a soulful rasp, the ear-grabbing chorus meant to write its own cheques, whilst Give Me My Halo reverberates to the sound of choirs and an Auntie Karen approved chorus, a P!nk number by any other measure.
The rest is bipolar, with I Want More and I Don’t Care juxtaposing the emotions we all feel at any given point every day – Welcome To My House is all like that; a little confused, sometimes lacking depth, but never ashamed and with its balls very much always out.
They’re a woman’s balls of course, not that it really matters anymore.
