Yamato (Where People Really Die)

The Van Pelt
Sultans of Sentiment

Or, as I call it, The Golf Album.


In stark contrast to other bands I blog about (*cough* the Brendan Benson one from last month *cough*), here's a band I knew nothing about until they were long gone. Maybe "long gone" is an overstatement, but I was at least four years late to the party. This was a recommended buy from a girl who deinitely was never my girlfriend, though I had wished that to be different at the time. Now she lives in Spain, and I'm back in my hometown. What does that tell you? People who knew of this album in the '90s were destined for greatness, that's what.

Every track on this album is a pleasure to me, though not all for the same reason. Some have great couplets or turns of phrase, there's the one track that has all of the party-talkin' going on in the background which I do not hate, and this track has useless, soaring background vocals. There's nothing quite like a high pitched "aaaaahhhh AAAAAHHHH" to set me off. Then it gets repeated, and again. YAY!

The Van Pelt eventually morphed into The Lapse, the Double Fantasy antidote to the clean pop found on here. The Lapse did have some great tunes, but it suffered from the fact that it was only two self-absorbed people (and lovers) trying to write songs, instead of four self-absorbed people.

I don't really know where Yamato is, or why people really do die there, but I do recommend trying to find it and reporting back to me your results.