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What started as a side project set up by Adam Brennan (whose impressive resume includes playing guitar and bass for the likes of Scud FM and Fat White Family) and Sophie Coppin as an antidote to isolation, has now grown into one of the best new things in the London grassroots scene.
Frequent flyers of iconic venues in South London and beyond will already be familiar with the band’s live sets, which have been creating a well-deserved buzz for quite some time. These are artists who are taking the tried and tested route of bringing their music to a live audience well before taking it to the studio, thus honing their feel of what works and what doesn’t, what makes it work, and why – and now that we finally have a record allowing us to listen to Y at home, in the form of a four-track, self-titled EP, there is no doubt that it has been well worth the wait.
What works, in the case of Y, is a heady mix of genres, structures, and suggestions, which is incredibly catchy and accessible in spite of how complicated and even brainy it is. In fact, if you put it all down on paper you find yourself confronted with a blend which should have no chance of producing something cohesive – yet this record is not only a coherent whole, it is positively brimming with personality.
Indeed, it is precisely because Y have such a well-cemented sense of what their voice and their presence as a band is that they can take repeated forays into different structures and inspirations without losing themselves even for a moment. This is something far from granted in a debut EP, speaking to how profoundly musically literate and capable in drawing from their past experiences without becoming derivative all band members are.
The first single released by the band, ‘Why’, is an excellent example of this: a relentless, riotous romp of a song with a dominant saxophone line and one of the most engaging instrumentals produced in recent years. It is a powerful calling card for the band it is (almost) named for, and coming straight out of the gates with a track like this, as the record does, is both an admonishment that this EP will not pull its punches and a way to plunge the listener straight into its adrenaline-laced sound. There is something to this track in particular that fully captures the joy of live performance; Gogol Bordello have perhaps done something like it before, but not with this level of complexity and finesse.
Speaking of range: perhaps what amazes the most with this record, even upon repeat listen, is the range of the vocals. Brennan and Coppin work extremely well together – not only do they have incredible stage chemistry, their vocals fully complement each other and are expertly woven together throughout the EP – but the latter is easily one of the stand-out female vocalists to have come out of the alternative music scene, and perhaps of the music scene altogether, in recent years.
The first parallel coming to mind for her vocals is inevitably Marianne Faithfull, because of the darkness in the timbre and the way her delivery confidently leans into the rougher parts, and the band themselves clearly know it too, if closing track ‘Marianne’ – another live set favourite – is the little nod it appears to be.
Yet there is a great versatility in Coppin’s vocals that is fully expressed in the midsection of the record. This particularly shines in ‘Ladies Who’, where it is the interplay between the two vocal lines that provides the backbone to a track that is as masterful as it is engaging, drawing from post-punk, classic rock, and even jazz, wrestling all its parts into a deceptively regular structure.
The short-but-sweet tracklist is completed by ‘Hate’, perhaps the most experimental song of the lot, with the sax as a dominant force once again. The balance of vocals and instrumentation is what sticks with this track – especially as the music offering of recent years has been feeling very vocal-dominated.
It is not frequent for a band to make this clear-cut of a statement with their first EP, but Y have been gigging for a while and have a very clear idea of what they are doing, and they are eager to let the world know. With a busy summer schedule ahead of them and a headline gig at London’s 100 Club coming soon, there is no better moment to experience these songs live and get acquainted with what may be coming next, finding the thread running through the mayhem, and simply having fun with a band which is very openly tapping into the sheer joy of making music.
