MP3 Review: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin "The High Country" (Polyvinyl Records)

[ Available as a Download, CD, Record and yes even a cassette from Polyvinyl ($8 for the CS) https://sslyby.bandcamp.com/album/the-high-country ]

For a long while now I've been following the music of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin.   I remember seeing their name on a PR company's website back in the early '00's and they were linked up with these other bands like Say Hi To Your Mom For Me which I've been following since but have never really found that one album that makes me go, "Wow, that is good".    Doing a simple search of my posts even tells me I've never actually written about SSLYBY before and the reason for that is probably because I've listened to their music and never really felt moved enough to write about it... At least until now.

In a large way, this sounds like Weezer.    It's fast paced fuzzy pop punk.   EFS comes out a little vocally and so does Silversun Pickups overall.    There are "woo-ooo-ooo"'s and by the third track it really just grows into its own sound.    Hints of psych/classic rock bleed through as it is at a hurried pace and just feels rather immediate.    The songs are all around two minutes, which is sometimes a little less and sometimes a little bit more, and they all seem to move at that quickness you would expect.    The fourth song has a very pop sound to it, bringing out elements of The Rocket Summer and The Pale Pacific.

The fifth song is the ballad and that brings out some Plain White T's.     On "Song Will" there is this feel like "Surf Wax America" though it never gets to that quiet breakdown that Weezer takes.    Overall something like the Pixies comes out in the way that this feels like something a band would make that you always hear about or always see people wearing band t-shirts for and then you go look into their music for yourself.    I'm not saying that all of the music which came before this was A+, but this is definitely the album that SSLYBY was born to make.

I have this list of bands and they are basically bands that either a lot of people like and I don't or simply bands that I like but never actually review because their music can never seem to ellicet a review out of me.   An easy example of this is Best Coast, who I always listen to every time they put out a new album hoping to hear something that I finally like.   "The High Country" is the reason why I always go back and listen to new albums by certain artists.   I hope to find albums like this by them because I feel they are the artists who have that potential.    So far this is the only one that has delivered for me but it has delivered in such a big way.   If not "Album of the Year", definitely "Album of Their Career".