Yoo Doo Right’s Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light plunges Krautrock into a new era with its own identity that crashes down around the band.
Montreal duo Yoo Doo Right's third album, Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light, is a hypnotic and propulsive experimental rock record that demands you get on its wavelength. Drawing on krautrock, psych and prog, the album is driven by John Talbot's relentless drums and percussion, which work alongside Justin Cober's vocals and multi-instrumental contributions. Guitars and synthesisers push and pull against the rhythms, recalling Suicide, Neu! and, more recently, A Place to Bury Strangers and The Sick Man of Europe. The influence of '70s Germany is apparent almost immediately, particularly in the repetitive, motorik rhythms, but Yoo Doo Right are capable of crafting (or should that be krafting?) an identity of their own.
Cober and Talbot are joined by violinist Jessica Moss and several other guests, adding further depth to the band's percussion-heavy sound. Roaring riffs run through 'Doldrums, Doldrums, Eviler Than the Devil', a track that finds a strange, dreamlike quality beneath its heavier instrumentation, before giving way to 'Torture', a nine-minute piece that takes its time unfolding. Both core band members have spoken about the joy within the album, although you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise from the track titles. That joy is particularly apparent on 'Torture', where airy synthesisers contrast with a driving drumbeat, gradually building into something far more imposing. There's a sense of release in the way the instrumentation develops, with the percussion pushing forward while the synthesisers give the music room to breathe. There are echoes of We Lost the Sea in places, too, particularly in the emphasis on rhythm and the way the arrangements create a sense of movement. It's this interplay between the heavier passages and the moments of relative calm that gives Yoo Doo Right's music much of its appeal.
Few bands are more skilled at creating an oppressive atmosphere without sacrificing a sense of momentum, and Yoo Doo Right demonstrate that throughout Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light. The electric guitar frequently works against the hard percussion, introducing moments of aggression into arrangements that otherwise rely on repetition and gradual development. There's a theatrical quality to the music, with an underlying darkness that occasionally comes to the surface. 'Neighbours Report Their Neighbours' takes the album into particularly sinister territory, its title suggesting a world of surveillance and suspicion that complements the music's uneasy atmosphere. 'To Be a Lambskin (Or to Be the Whole Flock)' continues that sense of unease, while 'Industriestraße 9' returns to the motorik rhythms that connect the band to their German influences. These tracks give the record a darker character without losing the rhythmic drive that makes the music so engaging.
This is a band that's clearly excited by new ideas and sounds. The album's arrangements have a cinematic quality, with individual passages feeling connected to something larger, making it easy to imagine the entire record being performed live from beginning to end. Across its forty-two minutes, Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light moves through doom-laden post-rock, psychedelic experimentation and relentless percussion, yet continually finds room for moments of optimism. The contrast is what makes the album so rewarding: even when the music is at its most oppressive, there's an energy beneath it that keeps everything moving forward. It's an approach that helps explain why Yoo Doo Right have become such an interesting presence in Quebec's underground scene.
Expansive and enveloping in equal measure, Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light takes familiar krautrock and post-rock influences and gives them a character of their own. The darkness never entirely disappears, but neither does the joy that Cober and Talbot find within it. For all its ominous titles, pounding percussion and moments of aggression, there's something strangely uplifting about a record that finds so much life in the middle of the chaos.