I have blabbed about Yuck and their debut album to everyone I know, and I am nearly out of breath. Their music is fabulous, and their live show kicks ass. Call them whatever you want – 90s, indie rock, grunge, etc. – they’re everything and more. I got to chat with Daniel from Yuck on the phone for the Creatives Issue…CHECK IT OUT. Tour dates below as well.

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Cedar: You guys are from New Jersey, London, and a few other places. How did you meet each other and start the band?
Yuck: Me and Max, the guitarist, have known each other since we were 5, but we started writing songs together about over a year ago. I basically talked to Johnny for, like, 2 hours because he was wearing a band t-shirt I liked. When the rest of us were forming the band, I remembered that I met this drummer (Johnny), and we managed to get a hold of him. He had just started university in New Jersey. I phoned him up and then sent him all the demos we had been doing. We were just like, “Come to London and play with us!” We didn’t really know him; I mean, I had met him for 2 hours. He just turned up and now he lives in London with us.
Cedar: Wow, that’s crazy!
Yuck: Yeah, it was quite weird. Then we just sort of rehearsed these songs that we started playing together and were just really lucky that it worked.
Cedar: That’s really cool. My next question is more obvious – where did the name Yuck comes from? Who decided on it? Was it a group decision?
Yuck: Oh. Well, we had to have a name. After recording, we began to put the music on iTunes, and we had name what artist we were. We just thought Yuck was a cool band name. That’s it.
Cedar: How has the tour been so far with the Smith Westerns? This is your first time touring America as a group, right?
Yuck: Yeah, it’s the first time we’ve come to America to tour. We like the Smith Westerns, so it’s really cool to tour with them and play with them every night.
Cedar: About your album cover, is that some sort of creature relating to Yuck? What is it?
Yuck: When we needed a cover, I just went through my drawings and decided that it really related to what we had created musically. To me, it’s entangled, if that makes sense.
Cedar: I want to ask about your blog. I like how it documents your tour experience, especially how you met your first fan ever in America. Can you tell that story?
Yuck: It was kind of a joke, the first fan thing haha. It was really funny, because we were at this gas station, and this lovely lady said, “Are you guys in Yuck?” We had never heard that before, and we were speechless, because we were driving through this weird place in the mountains of North Carolina. It was just really unexpected. We had just started as a band.
Cedar: That’s hilarious. So people are really catching on to you guys and quick to put you into this category of 90s indie rock revival tunes or something. What do you see your music as?
Yuck: We don’t really talk about that, and we haven’t really discussed at any point our intentions when we write songs. We just write songs; it’s quite an instinctive process. We didn’t start the band to make an album; we just started the band because we had been writing songs.
Cedar: Awesome. So what are you guys up to next?
Yuck: We’re definitely going to play more in America, and just do a lot of touring this year. We like the way people feel about music here; I really, really, really enjoy it. Our label is American, so we’re doing South by Southwest and then American and European tours. Tour, tour, tour!

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04/22 Seattle, WA Neumo’s ~
04/25 New York, NY Webster Hall ~
04/27 Philadelphia, PA First Unitarian Church ~
04/28 Boston, MA Paradise Rock Club ~
04/29 Northampton, MA Pearl St
04/30 Montreal, QC Café Campus ~
05/01 Toronto, ON Phoenix Concert Theatre ~
05/03 Chicago, IL Lincoln Hall ~
05/04 Chicago, IL Lincoln Hall ~
05/06 Washington, DC Black Cat ~
05/07 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom
07/17 Chicago, IL Pitchfork Fest
~ = w/ Tame Impala