Berlin-based, three-piece indie/grunge band YARAMISO are dropping their new album “She Is Another You” today, and we’re stoked to give you its special presentation with the band’s track by track rundown below. The new album is a noisy and frantic collection of melodic rock songs about loss, grief, relief, rebirth, and the inevitable creep of time.
All three members of Yaramiso (Gab / Lucy / Tom) share writing and singing duties and, although their song’s skeletons are usually written alone and only later brought to band practice, the themes running through She is Another You are surprisingly coherent.
“Releasing these songs feels a bit like getting high off having a throbbing toothache in the middle of a bad party, stumbling around for the answer to “how did I get here?”” – comments the band.
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“The following is a track by track breakdown of the album.” – they continue. “Each description / explanation / excuse is written by the main songwriter. Turns out we are all kinda on the same crumpled page. Yarmiso is best listened to loud, while one is in the midst of some kinda existential crisis, and we’re all in these crises together, right? Right?”
Go Sailor
Gab: This is about my older brother passing away after a decade plus struggling with addiction. It was sudden and painful in all kinds of unexpected ways, besides the obvious. It covers all those aspects, as well as happy memories like spending afternoons hanging out at his apartment, just talking and listening to music, most memorably Go Sailor. Musically, it sounds like me trying to get somewhere close to Dinosaur Jr without having any kind of chops that could approximate J Mascis’.
On Times
Gab: This was written in the run-up to the birth of my son. Don’t really know what I was aiming for musically, but the lyrics are about getting older, taking on new roles (husband, parent, functional adult) and how those interact with your past understandings of yourself. I very much ascribe to “you either evolve or you dissolve,” but letting go of past selves can be a painful and unnerving process.
Potato Cake
Tom: The bones of Potato Cake were written in about 20 minutes, really early one autumnal morning. I woke up extremely tired, as if I hadn’t slept at all. I was confused about how old I was and which life-events had happened when. It all seemed so non-linear. I thought about a couple of really fun and beautiful old friends of mine who are no longer alive and all the crazy shit they no longer get up to. Their little butterfly effect on the world is now absent. I guess the song is about using whatever agency and leverage you have to get yourself into a better space. I feel like there’s a myriad of reasons to be upset, angry, and tired, but no reason to be bored. The universe is just infinitely interesting and there’s plenty of work to do. Musically, I think this song kinda channels L7, early QOTSA, and maybe a dash of early REM in that chorus?
Contribution
Lucy: Contribution takes a nostalgic look at romanticised big city coping mechanisms. Lost nights, fights and the constant sense of observing yourself navigate the parody that is big city nightlife in the Western world. It reminds me of where I was at, how I miss and hate it at the same time, how many people are in that space this very minute and the ways in which we process teenage angst and trauma in later life. It ponders how this all fits into the global picture, when we´re sat in our little big city puddle getting soaked with our own self importance.
Gab: We only had the first part of the song, which we all loved, but was too short, so we slapped on a Guided by Voices rip-off at the end, and I fished out some lyrics I had floating around. It echoes Lucy’s lyrics about the very Berlin activity of going out in the city, forgetting yourself, essentially stopping time, and disconnecting from your life. Something that can be exhilarating from time to time, but which is completely dysfunctional when it becomes a routine (as it often does).
Pedestrian
Gab: This song was about forcing something to happen after a long songwriting dry spell, without regard for what the actual results would be. Simple and straight-forward. Essentially, it’s about being honest with yourself. After decades of depression, a couple suicide attempts, time spent in institutions etc. you sort of have to choose where you’re headed and who you are from here on out. That quadruples once you have a kid. For me, it was cut out the bullshit and accept who I really am. That means choosing what you want to keep and what gets left behind. But it also means rediscovering what you’ve loved all along.
Skaredy Kat
Gab: If memory serves (and it probably doesn’t), this is from a batch of songs written after a 5-month stay at a psychiatric hospital and in the middle of a year-long outpatient program. Different kinds of medication really slowed my mind down and made it near impossible to write songs. Around this time, I saw “The Devil and Daniel Johnston” and was inspired to write songs no matter how they turned out. Out came a batch of 4-5 very simple and repetitive songs. The lyrics are meant to echo that C86/Flying Nun sort of ambient yearning that always intrigued me when I was younger. Lucy and I have recorded various versions of this over the years. I like that it lives in various manifestations.
Poste
Gab: The working title for this was “The Wipers Song” and it sort of grew from there. I developed epilepsy back in 2015, so this fits in with the other lyrics about getting used to a “new” life. In the past, I chose my path(s) of (self-)destruction, so it was fairly new to me to have my body and life events start throwing serious curveballs at me (instead of my mind). Losing control over your body and brain in that way can necessitate taking on new perspectives, which can also be pretty insightful.
Delete
Lucy: I was singing an early version of delete after a particularly annoying and dare I say it kids, hilariously toxic breakup. A complete clishee can be equally entertaining as it is destructive. It led on to the analysis of how we love to revel in our misery but how hard it is for everyone to tow the lie between self pity and real pain. Basically a plädoyer for us all to “ look after your friends” mate.
Gab: This song or writing my guitar part for Lucy’s song finally gave me the insight of how influenced my guitar playing is by early Sleater-Kinney. Something that is obvious to me now but was eye-opening and really pleasing to see when the curtain got pulled back.
Hush Bwoy
Gab: This is a really old song at its root. The lyrics have changed a lot, but it originates from a time before any treatment, so very much mired in the confusion of excessive drug and alcohol intake and the cold of depression. I’ve spent a lot of time in hospitals and almost always find myself being checked-in in the middle of the night. It’s a strange atmosphere entering a hospital at night and then being shuttled to a bed while the whole building is asleep. Very quiet and lonely, even though it’s packed with people. It’s a feeling I remember from being a kid which I found many parallels to as an adult stumbling through life.
More about YARAMISO:
Yaramiso is a three-piece that formed a few years back in Berlin, a city constantly in flux. Their collective decades of experience in DIY cultures around the world converging into a strange, yet cohesive rock band. Too indie for the punk crowd, too punk and/or rock for the indie scenes, Yaramiso have carved their own path as willingly unhip outsiders. A couple of self-released EPs later, the band is now releasing their first full length through Rebel High Records.
Yaramiso seems to have little interest in fitting the mould of what’s considered cool in 2021. Why bother? A healthy distaste for the dominant culture does, however, percolate in these songs. And while there’s no maudlin pining for another time or place, one can sometimes be transported by an early 90s grunge/indie wave that ebbs and flows within the album. She is Another You is a noisy, frantic, and melodic collection of songs about loss, grief, rebirth, and the inevitable creep of time. Both singing and songwriting are shared across the three members, and each members’ unique experience with these themes is postmarked upon every song.
In these dank, obnoxious, and anxious times, there’s little certainty about almost any facet of life. For Yaramiso, however, She Is Another You is an ugly yet welcome addition to the family and seems to have arrived exactly when it was meant to.
