At the age of 19, I was at a crossroads. I had spent the last two years touring with my school band, Cajun Dance Party. We had done some incredible things, and I felt extremely lucky. We had signed to XL Recordings, recorded an album with Bernard Butler, and played a handful of international shows and festivals all before we had even finished school, but the band had come to an acrimonious end. We attempted to work on a second album and recorded some songs that I still look back on fondly today, but ultimately, different members of the band wanted different things. Will, Robbie and Vicky went to university, leaving Daniel and I to think about our next move.
I was devastated when the band ended, but I also saw an opportunity. I played bass in Cajun Dance Party, but I was never much of a bass player. I yearned to be in a band where I was the songwriter and guitarist. I bought a Tascam digital 8 track, some Yamaha drum pads from Argos and a cheap condenser microphone, and got to work.
My early demos were slightly (very) hit and miss, characterised by out of time drums, tinny guitars, and unconfident vocals. They lacked direction, which I was eager to seek out. I was a sponge, soaking up every musical influence I could get my hands on. Every week I would travel to Camden Town to buy CDs in bulk from Fopp. Without having much help or advice, I would go straight to the rock/pop section and pick up records from bands I’d heard the name of, or who had interesting looking covers. On one of my visits, a record caught my eye with nothing but a single, white candle on the cover. Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth. I put the CD in my discman and listened to it on the tube home. It was at that point that my musical journey would change course forever.
I had listened to The Velvet Underground, I had gone through an intense Beatles phase, but this was like nothing I had ever heard before. Sonic Youth was the answer I didn’t even know I was looking for; the feedback, the aggressive, distorted guitars — it completely unlocked my teenage angst. I had to know everything about this band and how they got their sound. I ran home, picked up my Epiphone Les Paul and tried to imitate their guitar tone. It was at that point that I wrote what would become Operation.
I wrote the lyrics very quickly and instinctively, loosely based on some health problems I was going through at the time. I turned the microphone gain loud so that my vocals distorted. My slightly menacing neighbour shouted up at my window for me to turn the guitar down. I bounced the 8 tracks down to a single mp3 and sent it to Daniel for his feedback. It was after hearing the demo for Operation that we put our heads together to work on what would become Yuck.
Although I sung on Operation, I was excited at the idea of Daniel singing lead vocals. We were best friends ever since we met on Jewish camp when were about 12 years old. It also meant I could focus on doing what I really wanted to do, which was write songs and play guitar. I was never really much of a singer, and I’ve always had an innate sense of anxiety and unconfidence that even today I find very difficult to shake. In contrast, Daniel had a radiating self-confidence which would fill a room, engaging everyone within it. He was a natural performer who always pursued the limelight from a young age. With Daniel by my side, I felt invincible.
Over the next year, we dedicated our lives to writing and planning what would become the first Yuck album. My fascination with 90s indie rock grew and grew. Sonic Youth lead onto Dinosaur Jr, which lead on to Pixies, Built To Spill, Superchunk, Teenage Fanclub, My Bloody Valentine, Super Furry Animals, Grandaddy, Wilco, Flaming Lips, Archers Of Loaf, Pavement, Slowdive, Slint, Sleater-Kinney, Polvo, Mercury Rev, Velocity Girl, Sebadoh, The Amps, Yo La Tengo, Guided By Voices… the list went on and on. If it was from the 90s and it had a guitar on it, I had to listen to it.
Along with my record collection, I slowly built up my collection of musical equipment. I traded in my Epiphone Les Paul for a Fender Jaguar, inspired by the guitars favoured by Kevin Shields, J Mascis and Jonny Marr. I bought the loudest distortion pedal I could find in Denmark Street — a Lovepedal Pro Valve, which still holds a special place on my pedalboard today. I also purchased a Marshall speaker cabinet and an old Laney head from my local music shop in North London. I bought a wah pedal after hearing You’re Living All Over Me by Dinosaur Jr., which inspired the opening track on the album, Get Away.
Eventually, we had about 30 songs ready to go. There was just one problem — we needed a band. We tried out a variety of drummers and bassists, but we were quite adamant that they had to fit our very specific criteria. What that was, we didn’t really know, but we had become heavily reliant on our gut feeling, which we always listened to if something didn’t feel completely right.
We came into contact with Mariko who had been in the London scene with her last band LEVELLOAD and was looking for a new project to be involved with. We sent her our demos and arranged to meet up at The Breakfast Club in Hoxton Square. Upon meeting her, I was slightly intimidated by how effortlessly cool she was. As soon as we parted ways, Daniel and I agreed that we had found our bass player. The three of us started getting together to go through bass parts at my parents’ house.
Now we just had to find a drummer, which was becoming increasingly difficult. We expressed our concerns to some friends of ours, who were living on a kibbutz in Israel at the time. They said there was an American guy who was living on the kibbutz with them who was always walking around playing air drums and making ice tea for everyone, and apparently he was an incredible drummer (although no one had ever heard him play). The only footage of him playing drums was on a YouTube video of him recording in a studio with his old band, Impossible Voyage. As soon as I saw that video, I knew Jonny was the perfect drummer for us. The fact that he had just started college in New Jersey was completely overshadowed by our intense tunnel vision.
After some lengthy phone calls, including some stern words with his parents, he was on a plane to London to live with me at my parents’ house. Looking back, this was a huge, quite irresponsible commitment for everyone involved, but we never asked ourselves the question: ‘what happens if this doesn’t work out?’ This was not something we considered for one moment. Our naïve youthfulness combined with our passion and love for this project took away any feelings of doubt or insecurity.
So now, we had a band. We would rehearse at Gunfactory Studios in Stoke Newington whenever we could. The hour-long drive from Finchley would eventually become too much for me, and I ended up moving to East London. Jonny also moved into a flat in Stoke Newington with Jock Norton (who played in a band called Fanzine at the time, and now plays with Puppy) and Felix Bushe (who now plays with Gengahr). Their flat was a dilapidated old building just off Stoke Newington High Street which they affectionately referred to as ‘The House Of Game,’ due to their ritual of smoking intense amounts of weed and playing PlayStation.
We tried out a few recording studios in the area, but the results always came back feeling too clean. There was something in the demos; a raw, buzzing energy that we wanted to preserve. In the end, we decided to replace the old Yamaha drum pads with Jonny’s (much better) real drums, and then re-record everything else at my parents’ house on the same Tascam 8-track recorder that I used for the demos.
Recording the album was an intense process. In the heat of the 2010 summer, our valve amps would heat up an already stuffy room. Sweat would pour down from my forehead onto the various pedals that were scattered around. It was a long process of trial and error. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know anything about compression, EQ or mic placements, I was just feeling my way in the dark, only using my ears.
After bouncing all the tracks down, I mixed everything on Garageband. Knowing what I know now, I’m slightly afraid to open those files to see the pure mess that lies inside, but it was that sound of discovery and naivety, combined with the love we all shared, particularly the fraternal love between Daniel and I, that coloured our debut album in its own unique way.
Before we released the album, we had already experienced so much together as a band. We were happy and comfortable in the world we had created for ourselves, but upon releasing the album in April 2011, we had taken my childhood bedroom and released it to the world. We had an unthinkable amount of touring ahead of us, including tours with Tame Impala, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Smith Westerns, as well as countless EU and UK tours and festival appearances. The stresses of so much time on the road eventually lead to a deterioration of mine and Daniel’s relationship, which caused the demise of this particular line-up. Life suddenly became very complicated after we released our debut album, but I will always look back on the summer of 2010, making music I loved with my best friend, as one of the happiest times of my life.