YOU CAN BE A WESLEY

Nightosphere EP
Self-Released [11/01/2011]

When the members of You Can Be a Wesley take a hiatus, they don’t mess around. After the Boston University students recorded their initial demo in 2008, vocalist/guitarist Saara Untracht-Oakner and bassist Nick Curran finished up their degrees in Australia and guitarist Winston Macdonald went for an Ecuadorian walkabout. When they reunited, they recorded their debut full length Heard Like Us and hit the road. YCBW’s initial plan was to work on a new full length this year, but the band’s interim EP, Nightosphere, is a satisfying appetizer until the main course is ready.

YCBW is one of those rare bands that absorbs, reconfigures and transcends its influences, subsequently sporting a sound that is at once subliminally familiar and oddly unique. On the textured and atmospheric Nightosphere, YCBW works a vibe that suggests the Sundays if they’d been raised on Curve, with the Velvet Underground influences filtered through their REM influences with flecks of Broken Social Scene, the Shins and My Bloody Valentine thrown over the proceedings like organic glitter. Untracht-Oakner, who has described the band’s sound as “fuzzy fun sex pop,” sings with an indie pop brightness reminiscent of Suddenly, Tammy!’s Beth Sorrentino and an odd squeak that could be a reined-in Bjork with a Boston accent, while the band, including new drummer Dylan Ramsey, folds their disparate influences into a compelling, complementary grunge/pop
hybrid that is deceptively forceful and quirkily poppy.

Do the full length already.
--Brian Baker

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