Yumi Zouma are breaking up with dream pop. After a decade together, the New Zealand four-piece have honed an airy, lush, lightly melancholic sound – but now they want change. “More extreme everything, more boldness,” guitarist Charlie Ryder has said of fifth record No Love Lost to Kindness, written during the band’s “most friction-filled creative period” to date. While it’s true that their latest singles are faster, louder and more distorted, these bright, pretty tracks will rattle only their longest-serving fans.
Bashville on the Sugar locks eyes with an ex on the subway and rushes with Olivia Campion’s breathless drumming, while Blister flips the band’s knack for whistleable melodies into pogoing, enjoyably predictable pop punk that professes “venom and rage” but is far more fun than furious. Drag begins as a genuine switch-up, with threatening bass and an uncharacteristically deadpan performance from singer Christie Simpson as she picks apart an ADHD diagnosis, but soon blossoms into billowy, even dreamy, layered vocals and luminous guitar.
This voyage of self-discovery is more intriguing on the quiet, disoriented 95 – a song about ambition and homesickness with delicate atmospherics and a surprisingly folky touch – and closer Waiting for the Cards to Fall, which mourns a relationship run dry but not yet over. Without the usual reverb, Simpson’s vocals are striking: “I’m leaving you no matter what, turning myself into dust,” she vows, gothic and ghostly. Far from a dramatic reinvention, this is Yumi Zouma remaking themselves in real time. Change is often slower than we’d like it to be.
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