Turn That Noise Down - Yello

So many well-known albums turn 30 this year and Steve Taylor-Bryant and Susan Omand travel back to 1991 to revisit some of the sounds of their youth that made parents shout "Turn that noise down!" This week, Steve reviews Baby by Yello...

I wasn’t planning on reviewing this album by Yello at all. When I was looking at the list of albums released thirty years ago I had a brain fart and mistook Yello for Was Not Was and thought I was going to get to share the video for Walk the Dinosaur [you're welcome - Ed]. Oh well, I am here now so I may as well play on the dinosaurless record.

Well this is…

No, it's…

Erm…

Oh wait! This is the guys from Switzerland who did The Race!

It's weird…

It's very poppy…

I really like it. It's either pop music taking itself far too seriously or not taking itself seriously at all and I'm alright with that ambiguity. It's damn catchy, and strange, and of its time and yet fresh. Who’s Gone and Jungle Bill are actually really strong tunes that I can imagine getting very drunk listening to and, whilst there is some delicate composition and skill in many of the tracks on Baby, I am drawn to the utter weirdness of Rubberbandman. It is unnerving and pleasant in equal measure and pretty much sums up my feelings of the album in general which is that Yello make music that is in a fight with itself and, from that, sparks genius.

It may not contain dinosaur related songs but the album is a worthy inclusion to your ‘strange but I like it’ lists and Rubberbandman is just astonishing. I have just made a superb mistake.