Yellow Days - A Day in a Yellow Beat Review
The highlights are spaced out between a myriad of filler tracks, in the end creating more of a “vibe” than anything particularly matured
After three years and ten singles, A Day in a Yellow Beat, Yellow Days’ 3rd album, follows his last with no lack of build-up. Clocking in at an hour and seventeen minutes long, and with twenty-three tracks, at first it seems like a rather grand statement of his work over that time. However, the album suffers for that length – and I would argue those of the aforementioned singles which didn’t make it onto the album were among the best, particularly “How Can I Love You”. While none of George van den Broek’s groove or soul are lost, his particularly heavy reliance on his influences and cleaner production detract from what initially set him apart from the crowd. That said, this album certainly helps him to move away from the bedroom pop label. Unfortunately, we are given gentrified funk with little substance, and often messy song-writing, instead.
The album opens with a recording of Ray Charles (van den Broek’s hero) talking about how important it is for artists to have something which makes them easily recognisable – which for Yellow Days would, for most people, refer to his soulful baritone. It’s unfortunate how little we see of this throughout the album, though it is good to see him branching out. This album also, unfortunately, sees little truly unique from Yellow Days, as he wears his influences very plainly on his sleeve despite giving them a 21st century makeover. It’s ironic how this snippet is used to introduce the album. Despite this, the first two proper tracks, “Be Free” and “Let You Know”, are essentially groovy. However, it starts to go a bit downhill after this.
There are a few songs where van den Broek tries to be more ambitious, such as “Keep Yourself Alive”, “You”, “Keeps Me Satisfied” and “Whatever You Wanna Do”, but in each of these it really does not pay off. Attempts at syncopation just sound messy and out of time, the vocals are often shrouded in a distasteful amount of reverb and, in “Whatever You Wanna Do”, the transitions through different parts of the song sound very jarring, leaving you wondering how you got there. It feels at times that he gets a little lost in the layers of production, particularly in “Keep Yourself Alive”. At the same time, there are some songs which suffer from a lack of ambition, such as “!”, which features a stand-out verse from Bishop Nehru but lasts only a minute and a half and ends up feeling half-baked.
Due to the sheer number of songs in this tracklist, it is quite difficult to find stand-out tracks. This exacerbates how long this album feels, as the whole thing blends into one hour-and-a-quarter block of mediocrity. Even some of the singles released to tease this album felt like filler tracks too, particularly “You” and “Love is Everywhere”. However, the rest of the singles make a solid case for themselves in the context of the album, especially “Getting Closer”, which features one of the stronger vocal performances on the record, and “Treat You Right”, which has one of the few really catchy melodies here. “The Curse” is also rather interesting for the guitar solo feature from Yellow Days’ other main influence, Mac Demarco. However, beyond these, the sheer amount of filler with two interludes and four skits really drags out the album. To make such a statement with an album this long, it really needs to be justified and many of these parts feel like they are there simply for the sake of it, making the length a weakness of the album rather than a strength – which it absolutely could have been if used to its full potential.
Another issue I have with this album is its lack of lyrical depth. Is Everything Okay In Your World featured some real introspection with tracks such as “I’ve Been Thinking Too Hard” but here we get the vague, vapid “Let’s be Good to Each Other”, which spends four minutes saying approximately nothing, and “Be Free”. While both are good messages, they are so poorly articulated, lacking any subtlety. The second verse of “Be Free”, for example, gives us the acute observation that “People try their best/To Suppress/Come on”. Meanwhile, “Let’s be Good to Each Other” reminds us “Now people can be so cruel, baby/No, they just don't seem to care/Oh no, but they should”. These lyrics seem so lazy to me, and I know he can do better than this, so it’s so frustrating to see that these are what made it onto the final cut of the album.
Despite some truly infectious grooves mixed into this album, as a whole it feels rather rushed, which is not conducive to an album succeeding with as hefty a runtime as we are given here. The highlights are spaced out between a myriad of filler tracks, in the end creating more of a “vibe” than anything particularly matured, despite now being Yellow Days’ third full length album. The sound certainly feels like a step forward, bringing in more layers to help him move away from the “bedroom pop” aesthetic, but the songwriting unfortunately stumbles backwards from his last album, regularly sounding messy and lacking any real lyrical substance. As a whole, this makes for a frustrating listen, as it could be a much better album with a bit more work on it to trim the fat and streamline some of the tracks – in the highlights we are given glimpses of potential far beyond the rougher patches on the album that drag it down.
