y pants: beat it down

After the success of their debut EP, post-punk art rockers Y Pants performed regularly in NYC and other East Coast venues. In 1981 they toured Europe for six weeks and upon return went into the studio to record their only LP, Beat It Down, released in 1982 on Neutral Records (Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca et al). The album extends the band's signature pared down rollicking minimalism. The 10 songs are varied, using surprising and inventive instrumentation. The music is at once filled with a sense of longing and a fierce ironic rebellion. With exuberant precision they brandish their 'toy' instruments and plaintive vocals in emotive expressions of female resistance. In dustedmagazine.com, Seth Watter wrote of the album, 'I love the sprightly keyboards of 'The Fly', the gentle lyricism of 'Lulu', the anger of 'Beat It Down' that comes through in the music's shambling, atonal jangle. The songs covered a huge range of emotions with an entirely new syntax.'