Michael Yonkers Band - Microminiature Love

The Michael Yonkers Band lore is something you must know before you decide that Jack and Meg White totally ripped off this band: This album was originally recorded in 1968 (so there’s where the crap production blame falls), but Sire records never released it, and suddenly someone at Sub Pop heard one of the Destijil limited vinyl pressings and snatched it up. Yonkers is known as a Minneapolis man who liked to make his instruments into mutants, giving them a bizarre and signature sound, which is now known as lo-fi, and people like Sonic Youth have made a name for themselves by honing it into their own particular abstract wall of sound. But, if the story of Michael Yonkers is true, then Sonic Youth, the White Stripes, and various other noise rockers like the Pixies and Sleater-Kinney owe Mr. Yonkers a thank you. So that’s the sound, the loose dropped tunings, the charging, clugging rythyms, the fuzzed-out pedal effects, the trash-can drums, the major-sixth-seventh-sixth jangle, and the acid-trip echoes (really - dude, listen to the bomb drop at the end of “Boy in the Sandbox”). There’s a certain creepiness to Yonkers’ stuff that isn’t necessarily present in today’s version of garage-spawned rock. The Twilight Zone “Returning” is plain macabre, and “Puppeting” is plain effing eerie, with the following lyrics interrupted by a gaping wallop of feedback maw: “Who loves a greedy man? Who loves a needy man? Who loves a colored man? Who loves the other man?/… Sitting in your chair, breathing poisoned air/… Your eyes are closed with masking tape/ Your ears are filled with water/…Your mouth’s a tape recorder.” There are some happier times to be had with songs like “My House” and “The Clock is Running,” but love songs? Not so much. I had to remember the political climate, so the majority of these songs are angry, anti-war, and riddled with seething undertones. Even in “Hush Hush,” which is, by all appearances, a love song, one moment Yonkers trails “Oh Love, oh love you’re sitting by yourself/ Wondering if I’m out with someone else?/ You’re right! You’re right! You’re right!” Lurking, jangly, and shadowy, but so simple it’s complex. This album is a true discovery for those who enjoy being paranoid whilst rocking out politically and artistically. [www.subpop.com]