Yuck Create 'Schizophrenic' Sounds on Their Debut Album

Danny Blumberg, the 20-year-old lead singer of Yuck, is a bit out of breath after getting out of a taxi in Nashville, Tenn. The reason? He's giggling about the crazy driver who drove him aimlessly around town, recklessly zooming through red lights. Though the driver didn't know where he was, he had locked Blumberg inside and demanded the musician pay the fare anyway, shouting "Show me your money!"

Although he's not even old enough to buy a beer in Nashville, Blumberg is the face of one of the hottest new bands out of London. Aside from their fuzzy shoegaze love songs that are tearing up the blogosphere, it seems all their fans can talk about is the unusual origin of the band. Together they represent three different parts of the world -- Japan, the UK and New Jersey -- but in their view, that has nothing to do with their music. And it's a lot simpler than fans make it out to be.

"We're from different places, but when you've got a band, when you release a single, suddenly you do all these interviews and get asked about things but you don't necessarily have a story," Blumberg tells Spinner. "It's weird."

After spending time in Nashville and then working in a London book shop that's owned by the wife of renowned poet Adrian Mitchell, Blumberg and his best childhood best friend, Max Bloom, decided to form Yuck. The rest of the group came together when Blumberg met drummer Johnny Rogoff -- the one with the humongous afro -- in Israel. The band was then rounded out by Mariko Doi, a bassist from Hiroshima, and Blumberg's sister Ilana, a part-time member who supplies backing vocals.

Listen to 'Yuck' for Free

For their self-titled debut, Yuck switch back and forth between upbeat, rigid guitars and pulsing slo-core. But forget the labels -- Blumberg puts little stock in that type of thing.

"It's quite schizophrenic," he says. "We haven't really thought about what type of band we are, or what scene or whatever, because we never really sat down and said we're going write something like this."

One could point to similarities between Yuck and Dinosaur Jr., Nada Surf or Pains of Being Pure at Heart, but Blumberg points to another influence that some rockers might be ashamed to admit: Blink-182.

"I liked really melodic stuff when I was younger, and I think it's similar to stuff I like right now, in the sense of really strong vocal melodies," he says.

Despite their current success a promising future, Blumberg has been able to stay humble. He's been in a similar situation before, with his old band Cajun Dance Party, and though he struggles to find the right words to describe it, he swears that Yuck's journey is a new kind of experience for him, a much more mature one.

'Yuck' is out now on Fat Possum.

Yuck Perform 'Holing Out'