"'TIS THE SEASON" by YNES

I really walked into it with my review of yesterday. When you applaud someone like YNES for her capacity to surprise, you can't complain if she then deploys it again: pretty much immediately with her second single in two days: "'TIS THE SEASON" in this case. And kudos to her for flipping my comment on how she scorned the upper case with "drink about it (merry Christmas baby)"  by using nothing but that form in her latest title. Oh well.. it's a learning experience for me.

Apparently the experience of putting yesterday's single out drove her to complete and polish & release another song she had ready so by the sounds of it, she is on something of a roll psychologically as well as musically.

If the first single was intensely personal in inspiration, then this one is pure classic YNES: as she says herself, it "….feels a lot less introspective and a lot more me…" .

It's actually as replete with the sort of top notch YNES wit & observation as the belly of an affluent Christmas celebrant after the traditional lunch. Line after line sparkles with trenchant and accurate debunking of the myths & assumptions which go hand in hand with the complacency of the normative.

At this point I intended to quote a few examples but it was hard to pick one or two out and giving you the entire lyric is something I've never done: quite apart from the length, that would spoil the surprises & pleasures you'll get from your own unwrapping experience.

I'll give you the opening therefore and after that it's over to you:

"Maybe the meaning of Christmas

is posting a picture on Facebook

with a wife that you hate

and a dinner you ate

and didn't help prepare or clean up"

After this the quality of barbs doesn't slacken but taking aim at subjects like credit card debt does link in with the concerns so often raised in her songs and those she's working on in "Fair Play", the ‘zine I mentioned yesterday.

The music is to some extent the perky synth-led sort of arrangement of its predecessor but this time there seems also to be a crunchy guitar part in their too, chewing away on the matter in hand.

Well she's back and on top form: if there is more of this quality and relevance to come then we're in for something special. I wonder if there'll be another one tomorrow. YNES isn't saying.