Remember that “tornado” threat a couple weeks back? Around these parts, the only tornado we witnessed touched ground inside Music Hall of Williamsburg on the night of October 2. Fittingly, that’s when Omaha, Nebraska’s Yuppies happened to roll through town. Joining a killer bill of locals headlined by Parquet Courts, these keen, artful noise punks managed to hold their own, and then some. In fact, Yuppies pretty much blew us away.
At Bushwick Daily, we’re featuring interviews with some of the raddest touring bands during their pit-stops in our favorite borough. In the very first edition of a new column we’ve titled Bushwick Bandwagon, we chatted with the nicest of guys, Yuppies, just before they took the stage, covering such topics as the band’s recent debut LP, bad radio music, the Omaha music scene, and where to find the city on a map (hint: it’s in the middle). Read on for a Spotify playlist, interview, and exclusive photos from the show.
https://open.spotify.com/user/1275726195/playlist/0477hDcPAcs0qPHF5mf7RC
At MHOW, Yuppies performed their stellar debut from top to bottom, track by painfully impressive track. Earlier this fall, the album was released by Dull Tools, the label run by Parquet Courts’ own Andrew Savage. Perfectly paced from start to finish, Yuppies drifts effortlessly between moments of cool, careful silence and shocks of riotous noise. “Across the Prairies” first introduces Jack Begley as our cryptic narrator, leading a hypnotic march into what’s soon revealed to be the dusty calm before a storm of fitful rhythms. While “Hitchin a Ride” is a maddening, anxiety fueled stomp through raw riffs, vocal shrieks, and slick, bouncing beats, Noah Sterba creaks a far more wistful tale on “I Don’t Know,” claiming that “we all build boats,” but he’d “rather be a raft made of driftwood than a yacht made of sand and pixelated ideas.” Yuppies is unnerving through and through, startlingly dark until its conclusion. “Across the Horizon,” offers (even if) just the slightest hint of light. And yet, the album is extremely satisfying in its anxiety-ridden punk bouts.
