You've heard Yello before. Now you need to listen to them again. OK, so maybe you're too old or too young or too lame to have enjoyed the
celebration of insolent shirking that is at the heart of "Ferris Bueller's Day's Off," but if you *have* seen the movie, you remember the deep growl of
"Oh Yeah" and once you make that connection, you realize how many other places it has popped up in your life. So it's no surprise that as the Swiss
duo of vocalist/lyricist Dieter Meier and composer, arranger and engineer Boris Blank approached the 20th anniversary of that success they'd
be busy creating more memes to infect your frontal lobes. The end result of that effort was 2003's "The Eye," previously only available as an import
to the US market, but now available domestically with a bonus disc of remixes and a video (more about that in a bit).
If the first icy strains of "Planet Dada" that open "The Eye" don't open don't grab your attention right away, by the time the first chorus of processed nonsense syllables is over, you will have forgot all about balancing your checkbook, entering any more data or exercising due caution on the motorways, because D 'n' B now have a fistful of all your neurons that matter. The boys really had a lot of fun with this track, also presenting the Flamboyant mix as the 14th and final cut on the main disc and in no less than four remixes on the bonus CD, which also contains a pair of 2003 remixes of "The Race, "
another Yello track originally also from the glory years of the mid 80's. And the cherry on top of all this whipped digital bonus cream is a video of
"Planet Dada" featuring our heroes in various poses worthy of the song's title. On all the odd tracks save the first and the last we are also
treated to the sultry vocals of Jade Davies, who seems to turn Yello into the Boys From Brazil - Planet Cha-Cha anyone? There's actually plenty of
swing in the rest of the album as well, like the smoky trumpet in "Hipster's Delay" or the funky percussion of "Indigo Bay."
Also worth noting are the liners (ha ha) - each song's essence is captured in zen-like fashion, unifying and dividing, cryptic and illuminating, binding
and freeing each song into your imagination. Yello have had their ups and downs since their journey began oh so many years ago, but you'd do well to
look into The Eye, it may just well be their strongest reflection to date. Oh yeah.
