smh.com.au review

Craig Mathieson
July 3, 2009

On Ragged & Ecstatic, the debut album from highly touted Brisbane four-piece Yves Klein Blue, the words pour out of vocalist Michael Tomlinson. From track to track he's the wisecracking observer, the excitable philosopher and a wry storyteller. Where some acts struggle to compile a disc full of original lyrics, Tomlinson has to work at containing his writing.

"It comes from me being a neurotic, verbose person. In real life I can't shut up or be concise," the 22-year-old admits readily. "I guess I have a lot to say. It's not for me to say whether it's true, or whether it's correct, or whether it's relevant but I am conscious of not appearing preachy or a know-it-all.

"I would write songs even if we didn't have the band. It's something I need to do. If I don't have the chance to play an instrument and use what I've seen in the last few days in some way, I feel terrible.

I feel wasted."

Ragged & Ecstatic is the culmination of a busy few years for Yves Klein Blue. The rockers have progressed from provincial hopefuls to laying the foundations of a national profile with few hiccups and much touring. The alternative band — Tomlinson, guitarist Charles Sale, bassist Sean Cook and drummer Chris Banham — have eschewed prevailing trends in favour of an idiosyncratic mood that moves easily between genres.

"We want to make the most of our opportunities. They're not easy to come by," says Tomlinson, who started the band with his school friend Sale and soon found a tune, Polka, from their debut 2008 EP, Draw Attention To Themselves, accompanying a car-maker's national television campaign.

For their album, the band travelled to Los Angeles to work with producer Kevin Augunas, attracted by his recordings with Cold War Kids. By day they would work in his studio, where Augunas would challenge them to improve their songs. At night they would squeeze into a tiny North Hollywood flat where you could barely turn on a light without waking a slumbering bandmate.

That resulting album adds muscular glam licks (Dinosaur) and solemn atmospherics (Celebrity Death) to the group's already frenetic sound. Ragged & Ecstatic sounds like a record: individual and multi-layered.

"We wanted it to be a 45-minute experience where you could sit down and listen to it from start to finish," Tomlinson says. "There's light and shade. There's not just slamming, compressed drums in your face the whole time. We wanted to show the length and breadth of the music we loved. We wanted to make something people could put on while they're driving and listen to the whole thing."



YVES KLEIN BLUE
Saturday, 3.30pm, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst, 9332 3711, $13.50.

taken from: http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/music/gig-reviews/yves-klein-blue/2009/07/02/1246127624189.html