Your Food - Poke It With A Stick
(Drag City)

In case you weren’t aware, Louisville KY has a pretty deep history of DIY punk, post-punk and indie rock. Whether it’s Squirrel Bait, Slint, Rodan or Palace, there’s plenty of legendary records that came out of that scene. But ever wonder who inspired it? You can make a pretty good case that Your Food, and their one and only record just reissued by Drag City Poke It With A Stick, can lay claim to that. Active from the years ‘82-84, their LP took the ferocity of punk and the arty sensibilities of bands like Pere Ubu plus records like Wire’s 154 to achieve an immediate and highly chaotic sound. Plus there’s an overt danceable quality to much of it taking cues from Liquid Liquid, A Certain Ratio and Gang Of Four with hypnotically minimal basslines and pulsating drums. Slint’s drummer and Louisville mainstay Britt Walford called Your Food “cathartic” while saying “their sound was open and catatonic” having experienced them first person. That’s definitely the case upon digesting the primitive and skewed rhythms of “Foreign,” the anthemic and catchy grooves of “Leave” and the oddly haunting angular devastation of “Cool.”
Thank you Drag City for putting this back out into the world. To me, this record is firmly and perfectly placed in the lost legends of art-punk along with bands like Dow Jones And The Industrials, MX-80 Sound, The Endtables and Y Pants. Just fantastic! (Dom)
Check out a track here.