‘They are the suits and vultures, The ones buying the streets, Leaving people on their own and, Flipping our lives for hotel suites…They build their wealth on despair, While we struggle to just breath the air’ (Housing Game)

Bilbao’s Yunk serve up four tracks that brim with intriguing contradictions, yet they emerge as an intoxicating, cohesive whole.  Fuzzed out shoegaze and a chiming dream pop sensibility are ferociously distilled through a grittily anthemic melodic punk lens to startling effect.  The result is a an almost euphoric reverie that is as grounded as it is dreamy, as combative as it is hopeful.

In a similar vein, the hazily upbeat atmosphere belies rather more sombre lyrical themes.  Rousing calls for housing justice and for collective community action to stymie the rise of the far-right form the bedrock, as well as an ode to the cleansing physicality of pit, while calling out those who choose to abuse it.

And while richly detailed, the immediacy of the tracks is vibrantly striking.  I found myself belting out the soaring choruses to the opening two tracks, Our Way and Leave Me Alone, on my first listen.  But that proved nothing compared the heart swelling peaks of Unity! before the shimmering, melancholy laced closer Housing Game brings proceedings to a stirring climax.  This has rather put a spring in my step and that, if we’re honest, is no bad thing during this rather bleak January.