Yawn

Sincere, moving and musically ambitious.

The downbeat tone may put some people off, and with the average track lasting a good five or six minutes, it’s true that some degree of patience may be required to get the most out of Yawn. For those willing to invest that patience though, the rewards are vast: Yawn demonstrates just how well Ryder-Jones is evolving as a songwriter.

Yawn is chilly and languid, the 35-year-old's penchant for sudden bursts if guitar noise giving depth and colour tot the Cure-ish gloom around "Recover," "John" and "No One's Trying To Kill You." [Dec 2018, p.30]

Yawn is a sublime show of songwriting strength. [Dec 2018, p.86]

It's a stunningly assured, deeply romantic and already one of the year's best. [Dec 2018, p.113]

The ex-Coral songwriter is unafraid to experiment on Yawn, and--aside from a few songs that lose a little of their immediacy due to similar tempos and an abundance of shoegaze guitar--the likes of Mither ('Is that your key in the door / Nothing else would mean more') showcase Ryder-Jones as one of the most distinctive, comforting and essential voices we have.

Ryder-Jones is trying to put himself back together throughout the lines of Yawn, but his affecting songs, nostalgia-swathed observations and unabashed vulnerability will inadvertently help you heal too.

Yawn, with a drowsy or bored effect. He doesn't sound too bored, but the slip into boredom by the listener may be too easy. Still, the music is strong and confident, but never precisely wakes up to the effects of a late-night conversation. And upon conclusion, the drowsy effects wear off.

Yawn, too, has its moments of beauty and craft, but the payoffs are so subtle and slow to arrive that its title becomes the regrettably inevitable reaction.

While there are instances of dynamism within individual tracks, as a whole, the album can get a little tiresome as the same palette of sounds are deployed to address the same feelings of despondency.