SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: YAWN – WISH I COULD’VE

YAWN
WISH I COULD’VE
KILLBEAT MUSIC

If you think that crafting close to perfect pop music is easy, then you’ve got things all wrong. Pop has a set of formulas you have to respect, and being inventive and doing it right within those formulas requires both tons of talent and knowledge.

Judging by her debut album Wish I Could’ve, Vancouver’s Julia McDougall, aka Yawn, has quite some tonnage of both and that composition degree from Simon Fraser University and constant appearances across Western Canada obviously had a hand in it. Simply put, McDougall crams the 12 tracks here with some familiar-sounding pop elements, but tilts their order and sequence in such a manner that they do sound both fresh and new without breaking the rules of what a good pop song should sound like. It is all good hooks and melodies, great vocals and pristine production, and that stuff is often really hard to do right.

Artist Links