Yoo Doo Right - A Murmur, Boundless to the East (2022)

Montréal-based group Yoo Doo Right released their debut album in 2021, the year after they shared a split single with Japanese heavy psych legends Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO. The group obviously take their name from an early Can song, so it's fair to expect a certain amount of groove-based repetition in their music, but their sound is a bit darker and more bombastic, and has more of an air of cult mysticism. The band's second album, A Murmur, Boundless to the East, was recorded by Jerusalem in My Heart's Radwan Ghazi Moumneh at Montréal's Hotel2Tango studio and mixed by Seth Manchester at Rhode Island's Machines with Magnets. The band's lineup on the recording consisted of guitarist and synth player Justin Cober, bassist Charles Masson, and drummer John Talbot, with Silver Mt. Zion violinist Jessica Moss guesting on two pieces.

With only five tracks making up the 45-minute album, the band take their time and stretch out, but they still play with force and never seem like they're meandering. "Say Less, Do More" starts with thundering drums and lush layers of atmospheric guitar and violin before Cober's unexpectedly brash vocals burst forth, sounding far more like the leader of a U.K. post-punk band than a Canadian post-rock group. "SMB" is a steadily paced instrumental which gradually boils up in a vibrato-heavy crescendo. "The Failure of Stiff, Tired Friends" feels more like a lonesome desert journey, with illuminating synthesizers setting the pace and a spaghetti Western guitar melody driving the feeling home. Most impressive is the 16-minute epic which concludes the album, "Feet Together, Face Up, On the Front Lawn." Starting with shoegazey guitars and drums which continually crash, the band shifts to a faster, racing rhythm and Cober shouts "Tango, at least that can make you happy," possibly referring to the studio where the band recorded the album. Alternating between the slower crashes and the sprinting sections, the band eventually seems to enter a state where time doesn't exist, drawing out the rhythm as the guitars roar skyward. By the end, the pace has slowed down to a crawl and the guitar feedback has clustered into an overwhelming, brain-nullifying mess, and it feels euphoric. Yoo Doo Right are skilled at employing restraint, but when they let themselves go it feels truly earth-shaking.