Album Review – I Can’t Have It All by Yea-Ming and The Rumours by Dandy Boy Records
After the sultry, indie-pop melancholy of the So,Bird album caressed our aural senses in March 2022, it is somwhat surprising that an artiste who throws so much of herself into each release as this Yea-Ming and the Rumours project of Yea-Ming Chen (Dreamdate) does is already back with an I Can’t Have It All of album of almost brutal introspection.
Tackling the topic of the pain and despair that can manifest themselves through anxiety and depression for those that continually sidestep ‘themselves’ in favor of conforming to societal expectations whilst simultaneously offering increasing hope that there is a realization of the road to take to be true to herself, the album slides with laconic persuasion through three primary musical nuances.
Initially, tracks such as the opening vignette of Pretending and Can We Meet in the Middle slide perfectly upon the special under-production of the current San Francisco lo-fi indie-pop scene inhabited by acts such as Whitney’s Playland and Sad Eyed Beatniks, while augmenting the aesthetic with fragile, jangled riffs that cushion the sort of gloriously sweet vocal disinterest that all the best female-fronted indie-pop acts seem to purvey.
The sound sidesteps towards a Camera Obscura-influenced marriage of faux alt.country and 90s UK indie-pop with the subtle pedal steel attraction of I Tried To Hide, How Can I Leave, and Somebody’s Daughter, whereas the title track, the superlative standout of Ruby, Big Blue Sea, and Before I Make It Home, drift the tiniest of 80s English indie-pop jangled riffs through the accommodating cracks of dominant twanging riffs to create a wonderful marriage of sweet and sour.
Yea-Ming and the Rumours have always been something special, but this I Can’t Have It All album feels like their defining moment so far.
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