Click to Listen to Yuck's Yuck

The members of Yuck were in diapers when indie rock was exploding in the early Nineties, but from the sound of the London band's rambunctious debut, someone was slipping import seven-inch singles onto their nursery stereos. The distortion-caked "Georgia" borrows Yo La Tengo's spun-sugar boy-girl vocals and "Shook Down" has the kind of pie-eyed harmonies that made Teenage Fanclub songs so pretty. Yuck channel their college-rock jones with skill and charm, balancing in-the-red guitar fuzz with melodic sweetness. "They can never burn out my love for you," Daniel Blumberg sings in "Suck." That he could be talking about either an ex-girlfriend or Thurston Moore is part of Yuck's appeal.

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“Ambling Alp”

The "Ambling Alp" was the nickname of the six-and-a-half-foot-tall Primo Carnera. Though the song is named after the Italian-born 1930s heavyweight champion, Yeasayer are actually paying tribute to boxing legend Joe Louis with this first-person psychedelic dance-rock tune. “I was always interested in writing a song that had boxing mythology in it,” Yeasayer’s Chris Keating said. “It’s pretty fascinating: There were so many amazing characters, and it was so closely entwined with 20th century history.” Yeaseyer also invokes German champ Max Schmeling and hints at the historical significance placed on the historic bouts between the Nazi-era boxer and the African-American Louis.