YUMI ZOUMA - Yoncalla

At last, the moment of truth over the long distance has also arrived for Yumi Zouma, the brightest new name of recent years in the chillwave sphere and thereabouts. Although it's become a fairly widespread trend in recent years, their strategy of initially working through EPs proved fruitful, not to say almost necessary, given the considerable geographical distance separating two of the four members from their native New Zealand. It's hardly surprising, then, that the songs written for their debut studio album came together the first time the now-quartet found themselves sharing the same physical space (that is, during the tour that took the band around the world), finally able to pool their ideas without the intermediary filter of an internet connection. As one might expect, "Yoncalla" inevitably bears the mark of this new compositional approach, and the atmosphere running through it differs from what we appreciated in their earlier work.

Where the EPs presented songs with well-defined stylistic contours that varied noticeably across the tracklist (albeit naturally united by the hazy, dreamlike aura of the production and by writing marked by indie-pop undertones), the quartet's greater creative cohesion has led to a partial smoothing-out of those slight divergences between tracks, in favor of greater inter-track homogeneity. While on one hand the result translates into greater compactness and a far more tangible sense of project identity, on the other hand the variables deployed previously had unapologetically staved off lapses in attention and issues of memorability, showing an extremely high average quality compared to other acts working in the same vein.

Far from being a lacking record, "Yoncalla" unfortunately ends up paying the price for those very issues on more than a few occasions, revealing a certain opacity in the songwriting and a slight dulling of the production process, which in combining dance suggestions with sophisti-pop nuances had carved out a first-rate expressive niche. It's not that this blend has vanished - indeed, in the best moments it resurfaces with the same force as in the recent past ("Keep It Close To Me", a swaying beat built on Balearic cues in Air France territory; "Better When I'm With You", which lets Yumi Zouma flirt with intriguing nu-r&b ideas and a sharper rhythmic edge). And yet, there's no shortage of instances where this mechanism simply stops working as it should, whether by recycling old formulas without the same original spark ("Remember You At All", which tries in vain to reconnect with the lo-fi patterns straddling sophisti-pop and dream-wave of their first EP, attempting to graft on urban-pop ideas in a rather muddled way), or by settling, without putting up a fight, into the classic Cascine house sound, with all the usual haziness and dreamy swaying that entails (the opener "Barricade (Matter Of Death)").

While it's true that the overall mood of "Yoncalla", thanks to the stimulating guitar contributions often veering into surf-pop territory (impossible not to detect a hint of Real Estate in "Haji Awali"), and the atmospheric touch of the synths, suits the record's summer release, making it perfect for seaside strolls and the most romantic of sunsets, on the other hand it never manages to move beyond this descriptive frame, to make the album capable of standing on its own two feet without the need for a specific context. Far from demanding a new "Alena", the feeling that remains is of a record that, for most of its (admittedly brief) runtime, seems content to indulge its own sonic tricks, playing them up at the expense of interpretation and songwriting. A shame, given how the cooperation of all three elements had previously brought out the quartet's best qualities.

There's no shortage of good tunes (the aforementioned "Haji Awali" and "Better When I'm With You", "Text From Sweden", slowed-down disco-music with a nice male-female exchange in the chorus), but hampered by the somewhat flat delivery of Christie Simpson's voice, who stepped in for Kim Pflaum, and by a general repetitiveness of melodic patterns (not even some notable bass work and strong electro-dance pushes are enough to redeem the lack of substance in the writing of the closing pair of tracks), what's left overall is precious little trace of a memorable vocal line, a refrain, or a lyrical idea worth noting.

"Yoncalla", all things considered, still goes down as a pleasure, knows how to win over the listener's sympathy, and does its job perfectly well as background listening. The stuff the EPs were made of, though, was something else entirely, from every point of view: the feeling is that by investing once again in that format, Yumi Zouma will go back to giving us their best.

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08/08/2016