Kelowna’s Yukon Blonde hail from the class of indie rockers that captured the hearts and ears of young Canadians at the end of the last decade. At the time, the BC indie scene was exploding with great music from the likes of Mother Mother, Said the Whale, Dan Mangan, Aidan Knight, and Hey Ocean!
After a while, however, the winning streak ran out. The grit and soul that made the music indie was replaced by sleek synthesizers and slow, generic pop songs. No one would argue that early releases by Vancouver indie heavyweights Mother Mother and Said the Whale have been bested by their more recent releases. Yukon Blonde have fallen into the same trend.
Back in 2012, they had that indie soul and feel. “Stairway,” their second single from that year, captures that perfectly. It is something of a peppier version of The Arkells’ first album, Jackson Square. Yukon Blonde’s latest release doesn’t live up to their former glory. On Blonde is packed with woozy synthesizers and drum beats that seem to stick exclusively to similar kick and snare patterns.
Songs like “Make You Mine” and “Saturday Night” blend into each other and fade into a blur of mild grooviness that wouldn’t sound so awful if they weren’t the exact same thing for 30 minutes.
The album isn’t all bad though. Tracks like “Favorite People” see Yukon Blonde returning to a more rock-oriented sound — if only for a few seconds. The most interesting track is probably the goofy number titled “Starvation.” Lines like “They call you the shark / ‘cause you got the mind of an animal” might seem corny upon first listen, but the track really does display some inventive wordplay.
On Blonde won’t disappoint any fans who are already invested in Yukon Blonde or other artists like Mother Mother and The Arkells. You’ve come this far, so you might as well listen to the new album. However, know it won’t take you by surprise or show you a different side of the band.
Indie music is called indie for a reason. Real great music, indie or not, needs an edge — whatever that edge may be. Yukon Blonde’s latest album lacks just that. It’s a circle of an album.
