Swiss duo Yello are undoubtedly best known for the pivotal role they played in the evolution of electronic music, arguably every bit as influential as Kraftwerk or Afrika Bambaataa. News that the moustachioed frontman Dieter Meier has decided to produce his first solo LP will have had a certain section of techno trainspotters slavering in anticipation. But the first fruit from the album couldn’t be more different from what this reviewer was expecting, anyway.
Starting with a metronomic tick-tocking that sounds like a grandfather clock slowly dragging its way through a rainy Sunday afternoon, the booming voice of Meier begins to weave a tale of loss, of the nightly ritual of hanging off a bar stool and waiting – quite possibly in vain – for the return of a loved one. He creates an eerie and desperate atmosphere, backed with a minimum of instrumentation, just a ghostly Mellotron keyboard and spacious, funereal rhythm as accompaniment.
This won’t be filling the floor down at Fabric or Ministry, then, but fans of the gothic torch songs of Nick Cave or Tom Waits will certainly be lapping it up.
