Oh No! Yoko

This is refreshing. It is truly great to digest brilliance on first contact. That agonising slow swallowing a lot of art insists can be more irritating than satisfying. But, I can thankfully declare that listening to Oh No! Yoko’s debut EP ‘PAU PAU’ hits a beautiful bench mark.

As soon as you start the EP, you are hit straight away with beautifully catchy and melodic pick guitar, soon followed by soaring, ranging vocals. This is what makes Oh No! Yoko a delight, time and time again. Having gotten into them a while back, enjoying their three prime download tracks, ’90s Kids’, ‘Courtyard! Bankrupt!’ and ‘Deer in Japan’, I was immediately hit by the range of genre bending and complex rhythm patterns. I thanked many different gods that a band with such a clear thirst for creation exist, as the music industry seemed to be becoming the orthodontistry equivalent of when they stick that stuff in your mouth to dry it out to fiddle with it. Fuckin’ labels.

Beautifully blending a strong, happy, melodic broth, salted with math pop formulations, a strong handful of patience in arranging, saltated with catchy and clever use of electronics, bold, vibrant and ambitious vocals, and a healthy sprinkle of bold talent throughout. Every element of the songs sound well thought out and happy. It’s very clearly that Oh No Yoko get so much out making music like this, and are very comfortable around each other as musicians.

The opening to the closing track, the superbly danceable ‘Go Alien’, Morris’ vocals and guitar are almost reminiscent of Dougy “The Temper Trap” Mandagi’s opening vocals to ‘Sweet Disposition’, but with more emphasis on a strong hazey noise that I cannot quite translate. The song soon breaks down into a mecha of beautiful pop sound, done just how it should be. A good, strong beat, ranging chords. It is a good, solid synthy indie pop track, and definitely a bold track on the album, and a free download on the bandcamp. So pick that one up. It’s a really good taster.

Their mathy pop delves have very similar nods to bands like Nosferatu D2 and Tubelord (before they released the album). Also, what strikes me most about Oh No! Yoko’s sound is how damn technical it is. They are not just a standard mathy indie synthy pop band. They have elements of that, but their clear love for creativity pushes them forward to just keep adding layers on layers of brilliance in every space they can, and it never feels cluttered, but always full and rich. No element of any song on PAU PAU is left to waste away. And there isn’t enough of that in music today, so it’s a refreshing change with definitely a definitive summer EP.

I cannot speak more about how much pleasure this record provides for my ears. I am done. - 320 KBPS

Pau Pau was released on the first day of summer, but for the three dudes who make up Oh No! Yoko, this June represents a far more important milestone: their high-school graduation. The thrill of new beginnings permeates every moment of this seven-track EP, which teems with jittery postpunk rhythms and euphoric guitar-keyboard interplay.

This display of youthful vigour is infectious, and it’s impossible not to be charmed by the relentlessly cheerful vibes. Unfortunately, the feel-good atmosphere sometimes comes at the expense of thoughtful lyrics. “Coryza” begins with the juvenile observation “I have some friends/They are real nice,” while the head-scratching “400,000 Years” contains a clunky tribute to “Sean John Diddy Combs”. And then there’s “90s Kids”, a celebration of adolescence that’s hampered by too-cute references to mushroom cuts, Windows 93, and the Baha Men.

Poetic missteps aside, Pau Pau is a fittingly sunny soundtrack to the beginning of beach season. The trio has well-honed musical chops, and these songs are packed with dense rhythms and hairpin structural shifts. Opener “Hatshepsut” is a gleeful whirlwind of blistering Afro-beat rhythms and soaring falsetto vocals, evoking a sugar-addled Vampire Weekend. Even better is the comparatively restrained “Buki Bag”, which is laced with sweetly chiming guitar riffs and doused in just the right amount of expansive reverb. With its simmering grooves and subtle atmospherics, it’s an undeniable display of songcraft that suggests that Oh No! Yoko has a musical maturity far beyond the years of its members. - Alex Hudson (Georgia Straight)

Pau Pau was released on the first day of summer, but for the three dudes who make up Oh No! Yoko, this June represents a far more important milestone: their high-school graduation. The thrill of new beginnings permeates every moment of this seven-track EP, which teems with jittery postpunk rhythms and euphoric guitar-keyboard interplay.

This display of youthful vigour is infectious, and it’s impossible not to be charmed by the relentlessly cheerful vibes. Unfortunately, the feel-good atmosphere sometimes comes at the expense of thoughtful lyrics. “Coryza” begins with the juvenile observation “I have some friends/They are real nice,” while the head-scratching “400,000 Years” contains a clunky tribute to “Sean John Diddy Combs”. And then there’s “90s Kids”, a celebration of adolescence that’s hampered by too-cute references to mushroom cuts, Windows 93, and the Baha Men.

Poetic missteps aside, Pau Pau is a fittingly sunny soundtrack to the beginning of beach season. The trio has well-honed musical chops, and these songs are packed with dense rhythms and hairpin structural shifts. Opener “Hatshepsut” is a gleeful whirlwind of blistering Afro-beat rhythms and soaring falsetto vocals, evoking a sugar-addled Vampire Weekend. Even better is the comparatively restrained “Buki Bag”, which is laced with sweetly chiming guitar riffs and doused in just the right amount of expansive reverb. With its simmering grooves and subtle atmospherics, it’s an undeniable display of songcraft that suggests that Oh No! Yoko has a musical maturity far beyond the years of its members. - Alex Hudson (Georgia Straight)

The members of Oh No! Yoko are graduating high this month. They have quite the summer lined up for themselves: they plan to do a short tour to Edmonton along with Teen Daze. They laughingly tell me that they hope this second tour turns out better than their first one.

Their first tour was last summer, and included stops in Victoria and Duncan, BC. "It was the worst tour ever," drummer Liam Hamilton tells me, "It was raining every day, we were sleeping five guys in a three man tent, and there was this guy at the West Coast Rock fest offering us drugs. It was weird." They only did a handful of shows. They were supposed to open for Jon and Roy, but the promoter expected Oh No! Yoko to do the set up and tear down without compensation, so they decided to leave.

They are releasing an EP on June 21st. This is going to be the first studio-recorded release for Oh No! Yoko. They named the collection Pau Pau after an inside joke: their bass player Nic Denis is half Chinese, he does not speak a word of Mandarin or Cantonese, but whenever he is going to visit his grandmother he says he is visiting his pau pau, which means grandmother on the mother's side.

According to Hamilton and singer Everett Morris, they decided to start a band in grade eight and forced their jock friend, bassist Nic Denis, to play with them. "It's okay, he liked it," they add.

After graduation they guys plan to move out to Vancouver and get more serious about the band - although it sounds like there are pretty serious now. Although all the members currently live in Abbottsford, they have increasingly been booking shows in Vancouver and commuting an hour and a half to two hours. That's commitment. - BeatRoute Magazine

It’s a rule of thumb that, when you come across a band with an exclamation point in its name, you should prepare to hear something lighthearted and offbeat. Abbotsford, BC’s Oh No! Yoko makes good on that rule, with a synth-laden tropical pop sound and a mantra to live out what the band members call life’s most important values: carelessness, freedom and fun.

“We started this band young,” drummer Liam Hamilton tells CMJ. “And when you’re young, all you care about is having fun, so we would only make songs that are fun to play.” ON!Y sounds sort of like a cross between Tokyo Police Club and Minus The Bear, with an upbeat, summery atmosphere that includes catchy synth lines, earworm melodies and the occasional gang vocals.

ON!Y is made up of Hamilton (17), vocalist and keyboardist Everett Morris (18), and bassist Nic Dennis (17), a trio of high school buddies who have known each other since kindergarten. When they were ten years old, Hamilton and Morris bought instruments and started to write metal tunes about bathing and loneliness at Hamilton’s house. Dennis and Lukas Thiessen, who’s not with the band anymore, joined the group when they were in the eighth grade.

“We covered ‘Joker And The Thief’ by Wolfmother at the school talent show and wrote a few songs with shitty song titles like ‘Victim Of Evolution,’” Hamilton says.

Somewhere along the way, ON!Y ditched its hard rock roots for its current sound. The group also parted ways with Thiessen, because—as Hamilton, who sounds pretty broken up about it, says—he was “too preoccupied with being a meat head.”

“Although we love him dearly and he was the sickest bass player around, we ruthlessly kicked him out due to his love for rugby, working out and hair gel.”

And so, ON!Y was pared down to its present form. The guys continued to work on new material, driving the hour west to nearby Vancouver to play shows whenever they could. Lately, the band’s song “Courtyard! Bankrupt!” has enjoyed steady rotation on Canada’s CBC Radio.

Most of ON!Y’s subject matter includes nods to cultural staples like Saved By The Bell “baggy-ass clothes” and Oregon Trail, the pedagogical adventure game that lives on in all of our warmest nostalgic memories. “We write about things that we find hilarious in life,” Hamilton says. “It’s just what comes out when writing lyrics.”

The closest the group gets to writing love songs is its heartfelt ode to starlet Megan Fox. “I think we made a pact back in grade nine to never write a song about a girl,” Hamilton says, “because it’s a pathetic waste of time.”

So far, Hamilton, Morris, and Dennis have taken things relatively easy while trying to balance the band with high school, but they’ve just graduated (congratulations!) and are now ready to ramp things up with ON!Y. The group will self-release its debut EP, PAU PAU (pronounced “paw,” not “pow”), on June 21, the first day of summer, before spending the rest of the year playing shows around western Canada. - CMJ

It’s a rule of thumb that, when you come across a band with an exclamation point in its name, you should prepare to hear something lighthearted and offbeat. Abbotsford, BC’s Oh No! Yoko makes good on that rule, with a synth-laden tropical pop sound and a mantra to live out what the band members call life’s most important values: carelessness, freedom and fun.

“We started this band young,” drummer Liam Hamilton tells CMJ. “And when you’re young, all you care about is having fun, so we would only make songs that are fun to play.” ON!Y sounds sort of like a cross between Tokyo Police Club and Minus The Bear, with an upbeat, summery atmosphere that includes catchy synth lines, earworm melodies and the occasional gang vocals.

ON!Y is made up of Hamilton (17), vocalist and keyboardist Everett Morris (18), and bassist Nic Dennis (17), a trio of high school buddies who have known each other since kindergarten. When they were ten years old, Hamilton and Morris bought instruments and started to write metal tunes about bathing and loneliness at Hamilton’s house. Dennis and Lukas Thiessen, who’s not with the band anymore, joined the group when they were in the eighth grade.

“We covered ‘Joker And The Thief’ by Wolfmother at the school talent show and wrote a few songs with shitty song titles like ‘Victim Of Evolution,’” Hamilton says.

Somewhere along the way, ON!Y ditched its hard rock roots for its current sound. The group also parted ways with Thiessen, because—as Hamilton, who sounds pretty broken up about it, says—he was “too preoccupied with being a meat head.”

“Although we love him dearly and he was the sickest bass player around, we ruthlessly kicked him out due to his love for rugby, working out and hair gel.”

And so, ON!Y was pared down to its present form. The guys continued to work on new material, driving the hour west to nearby Vancouver to play shows whenever they could. Lately, the band’s song “Courtyard! Bankrupt!” has enjoyed steady rotation on Canada’s CBC Radio.

Most of ON!Y’s subject matter includes nods to cultural staples like Saved By The Bell “baggy-ass clothes” and Oregon Trail, the pedagogical adventure game that lives on in all of our warmest nostalgic memories. “We write about things that we find hilarious in life,” Hamilton says. “It’s just what comes out when writing lyrics.”

The closest the group gets to writing love songs is its heartfelt ode to starlet Megan Fox. “I think we made a pact back in grade nine to never write a song about a girl,” Hamilton says, “because it’s a pathetic waste of time.”

So far, Hamilton, Morris, and Dennis have taken things relatively easy while trying to balance the band with high school, but they’ve just graduated (congratulations!) and are now ready to ramp things up with ON!Y. The group will self-release its debut EP, PAU PAU (pronounced “paw,” not “pow”), on June 21, the first day of summer, before spending the rest of the year playing shows around western Canada. - CMJ

Are Canadian kids really leading a ’90s alternative pop revival? Oh No! Yoko definitely seem to be attempting it, as do a bunch of other young bands in the Vancouver area. Maybe it’s the fact that they sound a little like Tokyo Police Club that has me on that train of thought, but hey, I’m no expert on the subject, you’ll have to make up your own mind.

At just sixteen years of age Everett Morris, Nic Denis and Liam Hamilton are all still in High School. However that hasn’t stopped them from recording a bunch of songs that sound cleaner than most other bedroom pop projects. They’ve been lining up and gradually winning fans in Vancouver for the past four years and their song ‘Courtyard! Bankrupt!’ has had extensive airtime on Canada’s CBS Radio. They even performed live during the recent winter Olympics, on the same bill as Tokyo Police Club.

But like a lot of young bands they’re still experimenting with different techniques. Liam and Everett once played in a metal band together and if you listen to the three tracks they have on their Myspace page you can hear multiple influences. ‘Courtyard! Bankrupt!’ is bouncy and synth heavy, with a TV themed sense of humour reminiscent of a late ’90s after-school teen drama. ‘Deer In Japan’ takes on Death Cab For Cutie, all electronic clicks and clouded in shy romanticism. While ‘Yellow Babies’ is the band’s attempt at writing a guitar, bass and drums song, focusing on sound over aesthetic.

Oh No! Yoko has also benefited from an emerging support base in Vancouver, fed by local religious groups. Even though the band has no church affiliation they’ve become involved with For Ones Coming After, an organisation dedicated to putting on live shows in churches and amphitheatres across the city, with a focus on being all-ages and unlicensed. FOCA has also helped the band make t-shirts, via American Apparel.

They’re currently writing and recording a debut album which they hope to release in 2011. - Einstein Music Journal

Abbotsford, B.C.:
Murder capital of Canada, home to many a Menno(nite) and hotbed of high school musical talent. About five years ago, You Say Party! We Say Die! busted out of the small-town-minded city, as did Fun 100. The next wave is now, and it’s awash with musicians who are, honestly, quite happy to stay put. In the case of Oh No! Yoko, a quirky, keyboard-laden indie pop band, they don’t really have a choice—all three members are currently in grade 11, so the occasional school-night show is adventure enough for the time being.

For anyone not attending W. J. Mouat Secondary, a first introduction to Oh No! Yoko was likely provided by the CBC’s On The Coast radio program when they held their Best High School Band competition last fall. Shortlisted to the top 10 were two Abbotsford bands, Oh No! Yoko and Christian hardcore screamo band, We Lay Fallen. The fact that, all of a sudden, moms the province over were into their music, had the boys in the bands pretty darn excited.

“We got lots of publicity,” gushed Liam Hamilton, Oh No! Yoko’s drummer. Bandmates Everett Morris (vocals and keyboards, mostly) and Nic Denis (bass) are just as stoked by the way things played out. The band didn’t come away with the top spot, but they did get an envelope filled with $70 cash! The band’s song “Courtyard Bankrupt” received a healthy dose of CBC radio airtime, and, at the live in-studio finals, they had a chance to play for screaming fans and Canadian music celebrity judges like Lee Aaron and Joey “Shithead” Keithley of D.O.A. fame.

As much as the boys really wanted to win the top prize and share a bill with their beloved Tokyo Police Club, they’re pleased with the two Feb. 13 slots they were given at Cultural Olympiad events.
“It’s during the Olympics,” said Denis. “There’ll be lots of people from all over the place that haven’t heard of us that might just be stopping by, thinking ‘There’s no events going on right now. So let’s just stop, have a hot dog, and watch this.’”

Oh No! Yoko is a crowd-pleasing band, to be sure. With clever, at times remarkably nonsensical, lyrics, Morris stands tall and assured at the helm of a band that seems to revel in its goofiness. The boys are completely earnest, however, in their love of music and are totally committed to making the most of their current good fortune. Besides, they’ve worked long and hard for this.

“Liam and I had a two-man band for a little while in grade 5,” explained Morris. “We played some metal music and it was pretty fun.” Somewhere along the way, the band experienced a genre shift, and in grade eight, the two boys asked their friend Nic to join in. “We used to be a four-piece,” admitted Hamilton, “but we kicked Lucas Thiessen out because he plays rugby.”

And so it seems to go. All three have devoted varying amounts of time to bettering their musicianship (Morris is still taking piano lessons, Hamilton claimed he took one drum lesson and taught himself the rest and Denis admitted he only took up the bass because he knew the band needed a bassist). Meanwhile they continue to find time to participate in track and field, work part-time jobs and excel at their French immersion studies. Did I say excel? Perhaps it’s a good thing that I didn’t actually get any solid quotes from the boys’ teachers…

But who needs good grades when you’re in with the scene? The Abby scene seems held together by the strong bonds of religion—and turns a blind eye to musical genre. There is no shortage of churches making their gyms and amphitheatres available for shows. Show bills are diverse, but inclusive. For Ones Coming After (FOCA) is an organization currently putting together live shows around the Fraser Valley. We Lay Fallen’s bassist, Joel Trask, explained the nature of this group: “FOCA is a non-profit organization that supports less fortunate youth in the lower mainland. They also help out local bands with things such as getting shows and T-shirts. They put on FOCA events with all the FOCA bands in order to raise money for good causes.”

Oh No! Yoko claim no church affiliation, but the band has seen nothing but love from the local community.

“We’re friends with all the other bands, too,” said Denis. “We just help each other out.”
The band particularly enjoyed a recent show at Northview Church, where getting on the bill proved quite simple. “We just go there and have fun. They always welcome us,” explained Morris.
“They asked us to not have any swearing in any of our songs, or vulgarity or whatever, but we don’t,” added Hamilton.

If you’re looking to listen to some of Oh No! Yoko’s music, the band has yet to produce more than a handful of CD-Rs, but they’ve got a ton of tracks available on their MySpace page, which also contains nonsensical posts and awkward/awesome photos. To provide some tangible support, you can always wear a one-of-a-kind pin, hand-made by Hamilton in Art class (Thanks, Ms. Lam!).
So much of what Oh No! Yoko is all about reeks of d - Discorder