The Young Fresh Fellows stock up on irreverence
Seattle’s Young Fresh Fellows return with their first album since 2001’s Because We Hate You. With band leader Scott McCaughey having joined REM as an auxiliary member and turning out albums with the loose-knit Minus 5, the Fellows have become something of a side project. Add to that the late-80s departure of co-founder Chuck Carroll, and the band’s irreverent ethos is more of a thread than whole cloth, stitching things together rather than organically binding twenty-somethings who live and play with one another on a daily basis. The new songs, two by guitarist Kurt Bloch, two by drummer Tad Hutchison and the rest by McCaughey, capture the band’s loony humor if not its early fraternal bonds. There are a few newly minted Fellows classics here: “Go Blue Angels Go†is the theme song for a yet-to-be-created hydro-plane themed limited animation TV show. “Let the Good Times Crawl†is a convincing Sunset Strip garage rocker sent back from 1965, and “Lamp Industries and “Suck Machine Crater,†whatever their inside jokes are about, are bouncy pleasures. The foursome still delivers wacky songs stretched across a deep love of pop, punk and rock sounds with simple punch and energy. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com] 