Listen to “Jackie” by Yves Tumor
On last year’s Heaven to a Tortured Mind, the experimentalist Yves Tumor cut a newly commanding pose, drawing on glam rock and squalling guitar solos to evoke raw, frenzied emotions. Their latest single “Jackie” is from the same family, a cut of heat-sick psych rock that closes in on heartbreak with sharp precision. Like their damaged ballad “Kerosene!”, “Jackie” is a dispatch from a relationship in purgatory: “We were torn apart right by the sleeve, oh, baby,” they sing in a voice that could boil water, the final words punctuated with heavy, filtered kick drums. As the fried guitars push and pull during the chorus, Tumor’s anguish rushes to the foreground: “I ain’t sleeping/Refuse to eat a thing,” they wail before losing their bearings even further: “I can’t tell you what happened.” Once again, Tumor proves that sifting through the detritus of love can be as electrifying as the experience itself.