There is no upside to a brutal music industry, unstable economy and cruel political environment. No upside at all. A world where these factors weren’t in play would be an infinitely better world. Thank fuck, however, that in amongst the chaotic miasma of shite that is the modern age we still have total punk rock heroes like YNES who are willing to make sense of and shout out stuff that needs to be noted with utter flare and pizazz.
The ‘Born Loser EP’ sees YNES gather together her latest vicious sideswipes at some deserving and very guilty targets. Lead single ‘I Wanna Be Overrated’ turns The Ramones ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ on it’s anti-aloof head, advocating for brash, outspoken and seen over unimpressed and overlooked with little more than three chords. ‘Fake What Your Mama Gave Ya’ begs the embarrassed middle classes to stop ripping off working class culture and ‘The Daily Male’ begs misogynists and a certain newspaper to just stop.
The final two tracks trade in the short, spiky sneers for rueful melody, ‘Dizzy’ swerves its attention away from the world and instead angrily toward an ex who sounds like a nobhead, before leaving the way clear for the cut throat tender analysis of ‘Veneer’, picking the meat off the bones of latter-day capitalist culture and crying over the corpse of a million victorious but long-dead revolutionaries whose faces now sell on cheap t-shirts hawked by bots all over facebook. Rarely does bleak social commentary sound so deliciously energetic and vital.
The ‘Born Loser EP’ is available to buy in physical form at daemon.tv on CD with a stunning looking Zine. You can also hear the record on all streaming services now. Take a look at the ‘I Wanna Be Overrated’ vid below: