Haiku Review - Go Tell Fire to the Mountain by WU LYF

Haiku Review of WU LYF's Go Tell Fire to the Mountain:
Sounds you may have heard
Before, in dreams or in bars
But hey, still so great
Notes: If you've heard of World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation (aka WU LYF) by now, it's probably because of the hype (BNM'd by Pitchfork) or anti-hype (see: The A.V. Club's review) surrounding the band. Sadly, those are the two worst reasons to spin this record.

I'd be remiss not to cobble together my own version of the band's now-ubiquitous PR story, so here goes nothing: Formed in Manchester 'round 2008, the quartet captured a whole bunch of attention from the UK music press by doing things like sending them mysterious band photos, charging record labels for demos, declining interviews, running a bafflingly cryptic website, refusing any major label support, self-recording and producing Go Tell Fire to the Mountain in an abandoned church, and telling most journalists and interested parties to literally, "Fuck off."

As the A.V. Club's Steve Hyden eloquently put it, the band's antics "[stand] out against the 24/7 celebrity confessional of the social-media age. By seemingly shunning hype, WU LYF [is] actually embracing one of the oldest show-biz tropes of all: Always leave them wanting more."

And so, we now have bloggers and Tumblr posts dedicated to deconstructing the band and their mission statement, while at once arguing over their legitimacy*.

Let's talk about the record itself, which is very, very good. Right off the bat, any review you read is going to throw Explosions in the Sky, Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire and Animal Collective parity your way, but the most apt comparison to my ears is Modest Mouse.

As early as album-opener "L Y F," the vocal yelps of front-man Ellery Roberts recall the barks of Isaac Brock circa The Lonesome Crowded West, not to mention all of WU LYF's lumbering musical allusions to Modest Mouse's This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About and Building Nothing Out of Something.

So yes, despite their peculiar background and relationship to the media, WU LYF are a relatively straight-forward indie-rock band, but what sets Go Tell Fire to the Mountain apart as a record in 2011 are two things: energy and the fact that no one else has put out such a bombastic, loud and anthemic LP this year.

While Pitchfork's review goes too far in championing the band's galvanizing call-to-arms**, the indie king-makers are right to recognize the potency of the WU LYF's ad campaign, no matter how juvenile, and the LP itself, no matter how familiar it may sound--"But underneath all that bouncing room echo, you hear a band trying to live up to its own hype, unglamorously woodshedding until every arrangement was tight as hell," wisely concludes P4K's Ian Cohen.

At its worst, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain is a batch of songs perfect to hear live, in some crowded, dank venue, beer in hand, arms around your best friends. What's so wrong with that?

*More on this phenomena in a later post.

**Doing so widely ignores rabble-rousing bands like Titus Andronicus or The Hold Steady, who both share a lot of similarities to WU LYF. I mean, really?

We bros, you lost man / We bros so long / Put away your guns, man / And sing this song

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WU LYF - Go Tell Fire to the Mountain

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WU LYF - We Bros

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