Bleep

Under the layers of sleight of hand and theatricality, it’s easy to forget that Sean Bowie aka Yves Tumor is one of modern music’s greatest capital-R Rock stars. It started to show with 2020’s Heaven to a Tortured Mind, a disc loaded with properly anthemic tunes belied by a fearlessly experimental timbre, making the infectious and the exploratory one and the same for Yves (not unlike a certain other chameleonic Bowie). The Asymptotical World EP sees Yves Tumor launching themselves back into their glorious sound world brandishing even more hooks and an even more fiery type of fury.

There’s a high-impact, punkish strain woven throughout the EP as each guitar lead invokes post-punk revivalist wiriness, and where the sonic textures don’t squall on Prince-like cut ‘Secrecy Is Incredibly Important To The Both of Them’ and the riff-laden ‘…And Loyalty Is A Nuisance Child’, they give off a home-made-stadium-sized atmosphere perfect for grand declarations of love. That’s lead single ‘Jackie’ to a tee, a dreamy track with cadences of classic pop and vintage glam, instantly imaginable on a glittering stage any time between 1970 and today, and yet completely existent within its own rock continuum.

Once again, Yves Tumor shows that grizzly distortion and excellent pop songwriting can — and should — co-exist.