The Dreadful Yawns, Take Shape

We’ve been hearing it since we were children — “don’t judge a book by its cover,” meaning, don’t make hasty assumptions based on superficial impressions. This is the exact mistake I made with The Dreadful Yawns, forgetting these elementary words of wisdom and presuming them to be twee-poppers based solely on Take Shape‘s opener “Like Song.” The track has all the guitar jangle, earnest vocals, and simple catchiness of a K Records gem, and so it seemed like a logical connection. But logic be damned, after listening through their fourth album several times, the old adage rings true, because The Dreadful Yawns are not a twee band.

Sure, there are some influences from groups like Belle and Sebastian on the record, but to say The Dreadful Yawns are simply one kind of band is to do them a great disservice. They’re also folkies and garage-rockers, with psychedelic tendencies and subtle rock ‘n roll sensibilities, and with Take Shape they’ve created a true sleeper hit. Their ability to inhabit so many different styles on the record while maintaining a sense of uniformity throughout is a testament to the experience and talent of the band. It’s one thing to write diverse songs; it’s another to write diverse songs that sound like they’re in the right place when put next to one another on an album.

In the liner notes, Take Shape‘s ten tracks are split into a side A and B, with the intended pause coming between the seventh and eighth songs. On side A, “Catskill” exhibits the band’s penchant for beautiful-but-simple melodies. Ben Gmetro and Elizabeth Kelly sing sweetly about “driving to Cleveland” and “falling in love / under the stars” over gently-strummed guitar and soft, whistling organ, the song evoking Simon and Garfunkel in their prime. The most important instrument to Take Shape‘s sound is the organ, used masterfully throughout the album to create wistfulness on songs like the ambient, slow-burner “All For Me,” or simply to hold a few shimmering notes over the bubbling bassline and busy drums of “Saved,” a track whose slippery power chords show an undeniable appreciation for the Kinks.

The distribution of songs between the two sides may seem a bit uneven, but B’s three songs run about the same amount of time as A’s seven. The lengthiest track on the album’s second half is the ten-minute “Don’t Know What I’ve Been On.” The song finds the band sounding like post-John Cale Velvet Underground in its first two minutes, as Gmetro and Kelley joyfully sing the song’s refrain until the band breaks first into sporadic and frenzied bursts of instrumentation, then into passages of silence, and then into screeching white noise, the guitars smashed, the mic stands knocked over, and the drums thrown across the room. The true genius of the song is at the end, when out of the electric hum comes a sobered Dreadful Yawns, softly picking acoustic guitars and singing the same line, “don’t know what I’ve been on,” now more as a bewildered question as they look back at the chaos behind them.

Following this is the album’s closing number, “Mood Assassins,” which begins as a baroque-pop arrangement, with its plucked violin notes, but gives way to a thick wall of guitar distortion, the violins now straining to be heard above the roar. The song proves once again that The Dreadful Yawns are a hard band to pin down. And this is the band’s biggest strength, their ability to keep the listener guessing through consistently catchy and well-crafted songs. Take Shape could be The Dreadful Yawns’ crowning achievement, but with this band it’s hard to be sure what’s coming next.