Yung Mums are definitely not of the stay-at-home variety. An all-gal trio from Vancouver, Yung Mums are a brash bunch with lo-fi leanings and their sparkly new five-track EP is a short-lived shout down that ends all too soon.
Yung Mums leapfrogs to action with “Dead South,” a guitar-driven garage punk number with Poly Styrene-esque vocals. It’s raw and fun and over almost before it’s begun. That’s the overall mental state of this collection of songs; they’re hot, hair-trigger, excitable and economic in their brevity. It’s not too much of a good thing; in fact, it’s too little.
“Cobra” is a venom-spewing, grimy punk peal that clocks in at a minute 44, making it the lengthiest track here. It’s an intense, passionate and not at all complex arrangement that sounds a little muddy, and therein lays Yung Mums’ charm. Their d.i.y. aesthetic and proto-punk patterns à la The Sonics and MC5 are what make them so agreeable.
“Shut It” and “Thru With U” continue their tattered but truthful lilt while making a guitar-geared raucous worthy of Waitin’ for the Night-era Runaways. Similarly, closer “BC Budz” is a brief but billowy number full of swagger and punk posturing.
This pocket-size collection of songs hints at a larger context, hopefully, for Yung Mums, who are certainly showing signs of flowering into proud, scrappy and trigger-happy musical monarchs.
