Yeah Nothing

If I had a penny for every glockenspiel, ukelele and phony German accent I’ve heard on a pop album this year, well, my pants would be heavier. Music-makers, it seems, are increasingly obsessed with incorporating novelty into their records. Of course, a wave of albums dressed up in bangs, wallops, hoots and clicks is bound to be met with a countermovement. As Issac Newton (and to a lesser extent, The Clash), taught us, for every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction.

Dublin garage rock trio Squarehead are just one of dozens of bands providing an antidote to this influx of quirk-doused pop and rock. Like The Drums, The Vaccines, Yuck, The Antlers, Best Coast and more, their set-up is remarkably simple, classic even. Squarehead are a classic three-piece, featuring a guitarist (Roy Duffy), a bassist (Ian McFarlane) and a drummer (Ruan Van Vliet), two of whom happen to sing. Whether these three musicians have chosen the lo-fi way of life because of budget, preference or a personal crusade to destroy the xylophone industry is irrelevant. What’s vital is that the melodies should be absolutely irresistible; thankfully, in Squarehead’s case, they are.
Falling somewhere between ‘Cathy’s Clown’-era Everly Brothers and Blue Album-era Weezer, Squarehead’s loveliness is bright, breezy and always easy on the ear. Excluding the triumphant ‘Confident Girls’, which dares to stray over the four-minute mark, each track clocks in at a snappy two to three minutes. Remarkably, all 12 tracks could be released as singles, and in fickle 2011, this easily qualifies Yeah Nothing for the ‘Irish Album of the Year’ shortlist.

It’s tough to pick a highlight, but the jangling howls on ‘Muther Nurture’, the tropical sway of ‘Tasty Fruit’ and the overwhelmingly friendly vibrations on ‘Get Light’ are certainly up there. As with all great slacker pop bands, there’s a little angst behind the shoop, and lines like “If love can die, then so can I” seem no more out of place than the saccharine “Oh my lady, you’re so pretty”. Granted, there’s no great mystery, no layers to be peeled back, no impenetrable influences to be investigated – The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Smiths and The Violent Femmes are all proudly echoed. For a band like Squarehead, naming a song ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ is as dangerous as The Darkness calling their new single ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, but the trio appear happy to borrow the title from the Fab Four.
What Squarehead’s debut lacks in mystique, it makes up for in charm. The dreamy harmonies and the kitschy riffs defy dissection – in the end, the thoroughly scrutable sound of Yeah Nothing is wonderfully exhilarating.