Go Tell Fire To The Mountain

There is the obvious notable contrast between Roberts' blunt delivery and the lushly treated instrumentation. But there's a pillowy negative space between all the divergent aesthetics that creates a resounding heft and felt resonance.

Go Tell Fire to the Mountain, and WU LYF in general, are a band handicapped, seeming less like an actual group and more of an experiment. In what? In determining how much vocal pain listeners are willing to endure if the underlying music is actually pretty good.

Manically projectile vomiting his incomprehensibles over reverb-drenched warm tones, the guy makes Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner sound like Adam Levine. He's yelling something fierce, even if we can't understand it. But the instrumentation is dynamic, powerful, and accessible enough to balance things out.

The stark contrast between frontman Ellery Robert's guttural, yell-sing vocals and the squeaky-clean instrumentation not only works harmoniously, but also creates a distinct and commanding sound.

Offers both considerable beauty and ugliness. [#82, p. 62]

WU LYF are a band to celebrate, a DIY tour de force, and their first album deserves a place of reverence in the modern indie-rock canon.

The swagger is really what drives that point home. Casual, not-bothered insouciance drips from Go Tell Fire To The Mountain.

It's easy to imagine Go Tell Fire to the Mountain giving disaffected listeners the promise of an entry to something beyond themselves in a way that James Blake or Bon Iver can't. Maybe you've grown past that sort of thing, but what about a record of exhilarating expanse and passion that sounds like indie rock and yet feels way bigger? Well, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain is that too.

Their debut is a giant leap in the right direction. [Jul 2011, p.118]

Go Tell Fire to the Mountain and WU LYF by extension soar on how excitingly singular they are; I want nothing more than to love this, just this, forever.

Some tracks are like collages of sound and voice. It rollercoasts from haunting to sad to simply exhilarating, and never loses a thrilling feeling that it could all go anywhere at any moment.

It's rather fine.

A shrewdly self-marketing, purposefully confusing gaggle of musicians and visual artists, WU LYF--which stands for World Unite/Lucifer Youth Foundation--plays music that's an exhilarating blur, swathed in echo and cymbal sizzle.