Are you missing good old-fashioned punk rock and roll, the kind that gets you remorselessly, hypnotically bopping your head to the sound of a killer riff? Well, look no further than riotously cool Liverpool rockers Yee Loi, powered by two sisters, Rose and Matilda.
“None of our songs ever let up,” Rose promises. “We don’t let up as a group, ever!”
Their latest single, Down in the Bunker, is one of our first tastes from the band’s debut album, anticipated for release in January next year. Alongside bassist Dan, the sisters have spent the past two years tearing venues apart with adrenaline-pumping sets across the Liverpool scene. Like the very best punk, Yee Loi’s music steers clear of love songs and takes inspiration from a much less obvious place, as Matilda explains.
“We were on holiday in this really crusty Airbnb in Italy and it absolutely stank. Dan came up with this joke that there was a dead body in the wall called Uncle Giuseppe. I came up with this story about a bully who gets killed by this goth girl, who’s the main character, and she also lives with her dead uncle, Giuseppe. And they all live down in the bunker.”
Among the early inspirations for the band were The Ramones, whose subject matter was often similarly quirky and unserious, while creating the most euphoric din you have ever heard.
“Their music is relentless,” Rose says. “It doesn’t give up. It’s so powerful yet so melodic, and the subject matter they write about is funny and interesting, and it really tickled my childhood brain.”
Leading us to here and now, the ferocious live sets that made Yee Loi’s name and caught the attention of Adam Ant and his team when they were picking tour support for his massive arena shows last year.
Rose says: “Literally, Adam and his management and bandmates had seen us on the internet, and they were like, ‘we want these lot’. We were in the airport, we’d been travelling for hours, and my mum said, ‘How do you feel about Adam Ant? ’ thinking I’d shrug it off as, like, who cares, then she said, ‘How do you feel about supporting him?’ It was one of those, I can’t believe it moments, because they were paying me to see the country, play guitar for half an hour, which isn’t enough, and I went to see Adam Ant every night because I love this guy and it’s crazy that they were paying me to do this!”
“We only played a few gigs before that in small clubs in Liverpool,” Matilda adds. “Suddenly we were in big concert halls performing to thousands of people.”
“They were venues I didn’t think I’d ever get to perform in,” continues Rose. “Not just as a musician but as a punter, like, ‘we don’t have your kind in here, you riff-raff”
The band’s origin story is one you may hear a lot over the coming years: they formed within the lockdown ennui, realising they had lots of time to kill, and creating something truly special on the other side of it.
“Before that it was just me and Matilda doing covers online. In lockdown we had all this time on our hands, and I was learning how to record things at home, and because she’s my younger sister, she had to do everything that I did!”
“I hadn’t learned how to produce songs or anything then,” Matilda adds. “So I just played on this little tiny kids’ drum kit in our house, and that’s when I started learning how to play the drums.”
Their first gig arrived four years later, when the guys started creating original songs like “Be Like Johnny”. As siblings, the dynamic between the leads was already tight, meaning there was little stage fright, but a lot of anticipation.
“I was sweating like a dog!” says Rose. “It was at Sound City in Liverpool, and people were saying, because we exude confidence, it was like we’d been playing for years.”
Alongside their original material, they are praised for their innovative cover songs, particularly of Rambling Rose by MC5, which is in itself a cover, and Mystery Train by Elvis: “It’s only about two or three chords, but we just tear it apart,” Rose says. “There are people who come up to us like, ‘they were playing that in the Cavern! People were covering your song!”, not realising it’s an Elvis song.”
This month they released their latest single, Social Suicide, the next sample of what looks set to be an instant punk rock and roll classic.
In Rose’s words: “It’s the best punk rock and roll album of the last twenty-thirty years. The best riffs you’ve ever heard. The best lyrics. The best melodies. And performed by the best-looking band out there!” Don’t miss it.
