The young English singer and songwriter’s funk-inspired synth pop is appealingly goofy, but too often, he sounds caught in a bland impersonation act of his own making.
Since age 17, George van den Broek has performed goofy bedroom pop as Yellow Days. Now a 21-year-old Surrey resident with an endearingly discomfiting rattail-esque hairdo, van den Broek exudes self-assured, weird-band-teacher energy. “What I say goes, because that’s how it should work. I’m the artist, man,” he told Vice in 2018. A Day in a Yellow Beat, his third album and first for Sony/RCA in North America, is the tonal equivalent of those wooden “This Way to the Beach” signs that a certain kind of mom hangs in her kitchen: sunny but a bit contrived.
“Intro/Be Free” makes the album’s funky, ’70s aspirations explicit, placing a sample of Yellow Days’ hero, Ray Charles, lamenting the sameness of modern pop musicians over a wry-but-rosy synth line. It’s a sweet introduction, and a good example of what makes Yellow Days appealing—he’s self-aware and doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously, a classically charming combination. But charm alone isn’t enough to make good music, and too often on A Day in a Yellow Beat, Yellow Days sounds caught in a bland impersonation act of his own making.
Although his sensitivity to mental health and commitment to creating “upbeat existential millennial crisis music” lands him in the contemporary bedroom-pop category, Yellow Days pays clear homage to Black R&B and funk icons. There’s a little Marvin Gaye in his vocal delivery, some sense that his production is what you might hear if you ran Funkadelic through Google Translate. He’s quick to credit his references, but A Day in a Yellow Beat lacks the corresponding vision and feeling. These songs gesture at depression in a broad way, occasionally urging you to be free, carry on, and believe in the good of the world. At some points, the lyrics are so one-dimensional that it’s difficult to distinguish them from the most saccharine radio pop. “I want you to stay/Please don’t go,” Yellow Days croons over and over amid the celestial reverberations of “You,” a song too uninteresting to justify lazy writing.
Still, there are some satisfying, earworm-y moments. On “Who’s There,” guest vocals by Shirley Jones of the R&B trio the Jones Girls create a smooth surface that contrasts the sultry inkinesss of Yellow Days’ musings. “Keep Yourself Alive” has a nice whine to it, like a sputtering pickup truck persevering towards the sunset—it’s happy and honeyed, urging you to enjoy yourself and “keep it alive.” Yellow Days is at his best in his most joyous moments, like on “The Curse” or “Be Free,” where a clear love for performance reverberates off of confident, emotive vocals.
But it’s not enough to tip the balance of the album from imitation to innovation. There’s no question that van den Broek is an energetic and capable musician, but those qualities feel irrelevant when they show up in songs that might appear on a bad Shuggie Otis covers album. Anyone can make music that sounds like soul, but not all music has one.
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