Crash Harmony - Nobody Asked For This (2024) Hi-Res

If that much-maligned yet wonderfully accurate term Yacht Rock implies music that is slick and polished, then Crash Harmony’s self-appointed genre, Yale Rock, is also more than just a mirthsome moniker. Even before you hear the music, you expect something well thought out and deftly delivered, music wrought from brains as well, and pardon my language, balls, and songs that sets standards and raises benchmarks. Give Nobody Asked For This a spin, and that is precisely what you get.

There are a number of startling aspects to this album, not least that it is a debut album released 38 years after the band formed and that they had been on hiatus for 30 years or so before reconvening to record these songs. But perhaps the most startling thing is that if you played the album without prior knowledge of the band, you would be surprised to learn that this isn’t a best-of compilation but just a regular album, so good are the songs.

Of course, it is so much more than a regular album—it is actually a veritable sonic goldmine. Opener “Velour Goddess” skips and jangles like a long-lost R.E.M. gem. “Last Night’s Girl” echoes a time when pop and rock danced deftly together across the musical landscape. “German Camp” is a startling, punked-up, and rocked-out blast, brilliantly at odds with the shimmering pop songs that are the norm here, and “Orange Goodness” is a simply gorgeous indie-pop ballad.

I was going to suggest that the band don’t wait so long if there is going to be a second album, but maybe the reason that this one is so good is that the songs have been allowed to marinate for so long. They have coalesced into a sumptuous sonic sauce—flavorsome, rich, and delicious.