Yellow Jacket Avenger - "Little Thief"
1. Among the bands that list Yellow Jacket Avenger as an influence on their MySpace pages are Kepler, the Wooden Stars, and Clark the Band.
2. Yellow Jacket Avenger lists Joan Armatrading as an influence on his MySpace page, and in the chorus of "Little Thief," this influence is unmistakable.
3. Sometimes YJA's music is fierce, mathy post-punk; sometimes it's easy instrumental. Sometimes his music is entirely organic; sometimes it's exclusively electronic. At its core, however, there is always a pure, delicate, pop sensibility.
4. Several years ago I was driving to Halifax, where The Cay was to play with Yellow Jacket Avenger later that night. The car was entirely enveloped in fog and we couldn't see anything beyond our windshield, save for an occasional high beam. What came over me, as we listened to John Coltrane, and moved at high speeds with zero visibility, was a combination of fear and awe at the otherworldly beauty of the grey nothing beyond.
It wasn't until Yellow Jacket Avenger played his first notes that I was jarred out of my zombie trance. The precision of the music, along with the vulnerability buried shallow underneath, were familiar reminders of the Ottawa sound - co-invented by YJA - that was so definitive in my aesthetic education. [Info]
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Hear hear: Roy Harper's wonderfully off-kilter take on the traditional English folk song that also served as the basis for "Scarborough Fair." I imagine that Harper's version has the exact opposite effect on children as does the S and G version. The way over-the-top string section has the occasional elemental force of Van Dyke's arrangements for Ys, and the inexplicable final minute can be explained as simply the perfect ending to another Roy Harper masterpiece. [Buy]