The Switching Yard – Yet Again
Canadian fuzz monsters The Switching Yard have absolutely aced a neat trick with Yet Again, their remastered and re-released debut LP, originally out 2016 via Pre-Rock Records. It’s A-side in particular (10/10 stuff that doesn’t quite carry onto the flip) accordingly combines primal psych motifs with catchy alt-rock scuzz. The hard-rocking result’s a bit retro, but – damn – is it effective!
The Saskatoon five-piece thus range from extremely woozy haze to sneering, space-rock scan all over knackered percussion and dirty riffs. Expecting the speakers to burst, a thin vocal drags the whole thing back from event horizon, huge pedal-driven choruses in “Hard Luck” edging the track on the precipice all the same. Like parent band Shooting Guns, The Switching Yard are unwilling to leave a decent groove when they get one going and will only do so for a big blow-out, this cut like many just keeping on going and if by some miracle this had turned out to be a new BRMC demo the Internet would be going mental, only slightly less so if it then turned out it was actually the new APTBS. White-hot, battering ram “Hank, It’s Midnight” is probably even better. All power all of the time, it oozes attitude and yet it’s got more hooks than an abattoir.
Yet Again isn’t all muscle though, 10-minute jammer “Behind The Gates”, for example, slowly rolling through neo-psych strumming to the hazy dither of Spacemen 3’s stoned oscillations. The more common hunting ground, however, is heavy-psych and the later exchanges are full of it, the doomed “Burnt Wick” an especially close adherent to scorched-earth policy by way of its excessive feedback.
Early copies of the re-release come with the Johnny Hash 7” and that too is definitely worth a snag. Straight out of the traps, certified atom-smasher “Get Ahead” goes full proto-punk strut, a supremely powerful riptide dragging you way out to leftfield, while “Piss Sabotage” is in turn a 100 mph garage-thrasher unspooling into neck-popping sludge. Yet Again and Johnny Hash together are an all-you-can-eat-buffet kind of round-up and, thanks to their variety, ensure you can feast on these platters for years to come.
~Yet Again is re-released March 30th 2018 via Cardinal Fuzz (EU) and via Pre-Rock Records (US).~