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**Drive Like Jehu - Yank Crime**
★★★★☆

In the grand pantheon of albums that should have changed everything but didn't, Drive Like Jehu's "Yank Crime" occupies a throne of magnificent frustration. Released in 1994 on Interscope Records—yes, the same label that would later bring you Eminem and Lady Gaga—this San Diego quartet's sophomore effort arrived like a Molotov cocktail thrown into the post-grunge malaise, only to detonate in relative obscurity while Bush and Silverchair sold millions.

The band had already established their bona fides with 1991's self-titled debut, a searing declaration of intent that emerged from the ashes of Pitchfork (not the website, mind you, but guitarist John Reis's earlier band). By the time they entered the studio for "Yank Crime," Drive Like Jehu had crystallised into something genuinely dangerous: Rick Froberg's glass-gargling vocals, Reis's angular guitar work, Mike Kennedy's thunderous bass, and Mark Trombino's percussion assault that sounds like Keith Moon having an anxiety attack.

What they created was post-hardcore before anyone knew what to call it—a sound that took the emotional intensity of hardcore punk and filtered it through art-rock sensibilities and math-rock complexity. This wasn't music for the pit; it was music for the neurotic, the obsessive, the kind of people who owned multiple Slint albums and actually understood why they mattered.

The album opens with "Here Come the Rome Plows," a seven-minute epic that unfolds like a fever dream of American imperialism and personal dissolution. Froberg's lyrics—"Here come the Rome plows/To pave the way for the empire"—cascade over Reis's serpentine guitar lines with the urgency of a manifesto being read during a building collapse. It's a mission statement that immediately separates the wheat from the chaff, the casual listeners from the converted.

"Luau" follows as perhaps the album's most immediately gripping track, built around a riff that sounds like Television if they'd grown up on Black Flag instead of the Velvet Underground. The song's stop-start dynamics and Froberg's stream-of-consciousness vocals create a sense of barely controlled chaos that's utterly compelling. Meanwhile, "Super Unison" serves as the album's closest approximation to a single, if you can imagine a single designed to clear dancefloors rather than fill them.

The true masterpiece, however, is "Golden Brown," a sprawling nine-minute odyssey that has nothing to do with The Stranglers' hit of the same name and everything to do with pushing rock music into uncharted territories. The song builds from whispered confessions to full-throated catharsis, with instrumental passages that wouldn't sound out of place on a Sonic Youth album if Sonic Youth had been raised by wolves.

Trombino's production deserves special mention—he captures the band's live intensity while allowing space for every discordant detail to breathe. The drums sound enormous, Kennedy's bass lines carve out their own sonic geography, and the guitars achieve that perfect balance between clarity and chaos that so many bands attempt but few achieve.

The album's commercial failure was as predictable as it was tragic. In an era when alternative rock meant Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots, Drive Like Jehu's complex, challenging music was always destined for cult status rather than mainstream success. The band imploded shortly after the album's release, with members scattering to various projects including Reis's later band Rocket from the Crypt and Froberg's Hot Snakes.

Yet "Yank Crime" has aged like fine wine in a world gone mad. Its influence can be heard in everyone from At the Drive-In to Modest Mouse, and its reputation has only grown with time. In an era of playlist culture and shortened attention spans, the album's demanding, immersive songs feel almost revolutionary in their refusal to compromise.

This is music that rewards deep listening, repeated exposure, and a willingness to be challenged. It's not background music for your dinner party; it's foreground music for your existential crisis. Twenty-nine years later, "Yank Crime" remains a towering achievement—proof that the most important albums aren't always the most successful ones, and that sometimes the best revenge is simply refusing to be forgotten.