YOWL tell bleak, beautiful stories on ‘Saturday Drag’

Every weekday, DIY’s new music know-it-all Neu brings you one essential new release to get obsessed with. Today’s Neu Pick comes from YOWL.

Day to day, 9-to-5 drudgery is often the subject of rackety, frustration-laden songs. But it’s rarely captured with as much grace and swaggering to-and-fro as on YOWL’s gigantic new song, ‘Saturday Drag’.

Seemingly containing a ten chapter opus into five minutes, the Peckham five-piece stagger through the motions like a drunk delivering low-slung hooks. Poetic, romanticised verses are one thing, but ‘Saturday Drag’’s chorus is the killer blow, coming off like Parquet Courts’ Austin Savage losing all inhibitions in a sweat and beer-stained bar. “Now I took that valium and now I need more valium,” they croak, over a wall of clattering guitars.

‘Saturday Drag’ goes from dull daytime nothingness to weekend shenanigans, right back to Monday morning’s hellish grip. YOWL sing of how office lights “look like a crack in the fabric of time,” capturing the grim reality so many subscribe to.

YOWL play the following UK shows:

OCTOBER
29 London, The Montague Arms (EP release show)

NOVEMBER
29 Brighton, Green Door Store