The Brag

Yuck
The Simple Things
By Joshua Kloke

Daniel Blumberg appreciates the value of rest and relaxation. After an exhaustive year of touring North America and Europe in support of Yuck’s self-titled debut, Blumberg is at home in London, celebrating the simple things in life. “I like waking up and making coffee,” he tells me. “There’s lots of bad coffee in America.”

But disparaging the awful roadside coffee one must endure during an American tour is about as far as Blumberg will delve into the past year. Although 2011 was huge for his band Yuck, with the unpretentious and engulfing swarm of their fuzz-rock debut turning heads upon release (and making its way onto many year-end lists), Blumberg sounds distant and distracted when asked about the past twelve months. For all his ability to rest and relax, he isn’t one to reflect. “It’s so strange,” he says, speaking slowly. “We came off tour, which literally started in January, and that was only a week and a half ago. It’s strange talking about something that we did a year and a half ago – I was 19 when some of those songs were written! [But] we still consider ourselves very fortunate that so many people have gotten into it.”

Blumberg also finds it difficult to speak about the songs on Yuck; it’s as if he’s said all he can about them. “In a lot of artforms, it’s like that; [art] is about presenting things to people so that they’re surrounded in the right context. We might have taken the long-winded road in some ways, because – especially in Britain – people really latch on to things that can often just be a shortcut… But as a music fan, I’m not really drawn to music like that,” he says. “Thinking about playing live, we’ve been doing it [so much] in such a short period of time that if we were talking at a different time, I’d probably have a different response. I might be talking about a new song that I can’t wait to play live, or maybe I’d be talking about who we were supporting that night. Sometimes it can be such a distant world…” Even when asked about the formula for Yuck, and its near-sublime balance of pop hooks and distortion, Blumberg can only hazard a guess as to why things worked out as well as they did. “We hadn’t really written songs together before. We didn’t really talk much about what we were going to do. We weren’t necessarily going for consistency. There wasn’t any deadline or anything. We were simply writing songs.”

The band’s age could play a role in how overwhelmed they seem, and how unable Blumberg is to comprehend exactly why they’ve been so successful; with the majority of the band only just 21, many of the members weren’t able to enjoy a drink in the American venues they were playing. But the frontman isn’t convinced that their youth has affected them too much. “I think there’s lots of young bands out there,” he says. “The first tour we did this year was with Smith Westerns. We were all in America, and at the time all of us were 20 – and you have to be 21 to drink in America. So we were treated a little differently, showing our IDs and getting these big black stamps on our arms. [But] I don’t know if we’re treated that much differently. We’ve also gone on tours with bands and friends of ours that are much older than us – so when you’re touring, it doesn’t really feel all that different.”

As the kind of band that benefitted from a ton of blog hype surrounding the release of Yuck, it was easy to imagine them as just another flash in the pan – but Yuck aren’t keen to read too much into that. Keeping a level head while moving forward – and, of course, while seeking out life’s simple pleasures – is what will keep these fuzz rockers in business. “There are so many good albums being made. This year in particular, there’ve been so many albums released that I love so much. I don’t know what we’re meant to feel, but when we finished recording our album, we didn’t really dwell on it … I don’t know if ‘surprised’ is the right word, but it’s something,” Blumberg says, trying to comprehend his band’s success. “We went on tour with Unknown Mortal Orchestra, who’re one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen, and they were supporting us. I don’t know what makes people get excited; it’s cool, but I also don’t really know what I’m supposed to think about it. Maybe if we’d been doing it for years and years and had tons of records and people had been dedicated to coming to the shows, then maybe I’d feel differently. There’s never been a point where we say to ourselves, ‘Oh this is great, what we’re doing.’ It’s more just showing up to a new town, and going to find the best coffee shop.”

What: Yuck is out now through Fat Possum
With: EMA
Where: Oxford Art Factory
When: Thursday February 9
More: Also playing at Laneway Festival @ Sydney College of the Arts on Sunday February 5, with M83, Feist, Chairlift, Givers, Laura Marling and more