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The term “alternative music” has evolved over the years. When I was growing up in the 1990s, it referred to what was
basically rock music that was considered either too soft for heavy metal or too hard for anything else, mostly because of
its tendencies to mesh styles (hip-hop being the most popular). Nowadays, it’s essentially a category for the
uncategorizable—a wasteland of wide-ranging styles that has (ironically enough) eliminated the point of the very category
to which they belong.
So it almost goes without saying that trying to make a lasting impression in such a category is virtually impossible. Yet,
for the last five years, Canadian quartet Yukon Blonde has been doing just that, fighting its way to recognition and
releasing three full-length albums in the process. While their most recent, On Blonde, may not be a great listen all the
way through, it shows enough originality and talent that will have new listeners (like myself) looking into their previous
works and old listeners enjoying select tracks and being encouraged by the promise of a more complete effort in the
future.
With the opening track, “Confused,” Blonde sends an early message that listeners will be taking a trip back through the
1980s, which continues its inexplicable yet oddly pleasant resurgence. Along with “Confused,” tracks like “Como,”
“Saturday Night,” and “Starvation” (you can even lump in the slightly faster “Favourite People”) implement the straight-
laced drumming, echoing vocals, and simple yet catchy keyboard melodies that will have you thinking back on their more
well-known inspirations such as A-ha’s “Take On Me.” However, when squeezed into a set of only ten songs, such memories
start to blur together, which—although elevated slightly by choruses so easily understood and memorized (a
brilliant move by mixer Tony Hoffer) that you’ll be singing them by the end of each song—ultimately begins to cause
what I like to call “album black-out” (phasing out and phasing back in two to three songs later with no idea how you got
there).
The real fun comes early on with “Make U Mine”—a more mellow “Welcome to Miami” type that’ll whisk you away to the
downtown strip with the top down and the breeze blowing through your hair, getting come hither looks from hotties checking
you out in your square sunglasses and business suit with the shirt unbuttoned to the chest. And “I Wanna Be Your Man” is a cabaret-esque chant anthem with hard percussion
and a more-than-welcome dose of electric guitar that will entrance many into bopping their hips
and pointing sensually towards themselves in the bathroom mirror when nobody else is at home (other people do that,
right?).
Although the other three songs, “Hannah,” “You Broke the Law,” and “Jezebel,” all have their own unique qualities, either they
feel unfinished for various reasons or they simply blend into the rest of the album too much to make any significant
contributions. Overall, I would treat this just like the “alternative” category: buy selectively without committing to the
whole.
