I realized recently that despite hearing the name Drive Like Jehu dropped alongside many of my favorite post-hardcore, emo, and punk bands for decades, I had never knowingly listened to them. I had confided this to a group of friends, who encouraged me to buy this record immediately.

And though I hadn’t listened to this record before receiving this record yesterday, I’ve heard its impact for years. This is the kind of record with such an unmistakable influence on the scene that I have heard every scraping-guitared, ragged-voiced, overdriven-bass, angular-drummed second of this album filtered through other bands.

But even after nearly thirty years, this album sounds fresh and inventive, no matter how many other acts have tried to follow the same formula.

The realization of my omission came as I was reading All the Clever Words on Pages: A Portrait of My Friendship with Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou by Paul Matthew Harrison. In the book, it’s recounted that Brandon Ebel of Tooth & Nail records saw mewithoutYou on a generator stage at Cornerstone and was reminded of Drive Like Jehu. Given that mewithoutYou is my favorite band ever, I was curious to hear the comparison. I asked a group chat which Drive Like Jehu album sounded the most like them. The answer I received was, and I quote, “freaking none of them,” but that I should get Yank Crime ASAP.

In the opening moments of “Here Come the Rome Plows,” I wondered why Brandon Ebel would want an act that reminded him of Drive Like Jehu when he already had Blenderhead, whose abrasive, mathy brand of post-hardcore I’ve loved since high school. But talking about Blenderhead as the Christian Drive Like Jehu (or Drive Like Jehu as the secular Blenderhead?) does a disservice to both bands. There were plenty of acts making this sort of scraping, shouty math-influenced punk music in the mid-90s (Jawbox, anyone?).  Drive Like Jehu might have been the most maniacal though.

While Rick Froberg does have some melodic moments, most of his vocals are delivered in a half-scream (perhaps where Ebel saw the connection to mewithoutYou). There’s little distinction between rhythm and lead guitars, Froberg and John Reis twisting their riffs around each other chaotically. Sometimes, they rely more on feedback and string manipulation a la Sonic Youth and other noise rock acts than on actual playing. Bassist Mike Kennedy and drummer Mark Trombino are just as manic, switching between rhythms with whiplash-inducing starts and stops.

While the band is celebrated for their combustive punk explosiveness, they don’t feel constrained by the short run times of most punk and hardcore songs. In fact, four of the tracks here are longer than seven minutes, with two of those stretching past nine minutes. While these long tracks aren’t quite as explosive as the shorter ones, there’s no shortage of catharsis. “Luau” and “Super Unison” in particular waste no time, retaining the band’s intense energy throughout their entire run time. “Do You Compute” is a bit more patient, building through more subdued verses to a fiery climax. However, the most controlled track, the instrumental “New Intro,” is only three and a half minutes long. Oh—and I didn’t even mention, this came out on a major label. 

For more evidence of the band’s unconventional ethos, look no further than this very vinyl pressing. At fifty-five minutes long, this album is a bit too long for a single LP. Many albums like this are pressed across 2 LPs, or maybe even just three sides with an etched D-side. Yank Crime on the other hand was pressed on one LP and one 7″. But because the 7″ format couldn’t fit the epic nine-minute closer “Sinews,” the 7″ includes three songs from the middle of the original tracklist. While there’s no way to hear the original song order on vinyl, many fans on Discogs say the best way to hear it is to listen to side A, then the 7″, then side B. This makes sense only in that “Sinews” is a much better closer than the punky “New Math,” but it is still the most bizarre listening order I’ve ever experienced.

Admittedly, this feels like one of the more incomplete reviews I’ve posted here, despite the word count. This is only my second listen, and the album is far too dense to fully digest with only two playthroughs. But that’s fine—this would have been one of my favorite albums if I had heard it at the same time that I was discovering Fugazi, Jawbox, Sunny Day Real Estate, Blenderhead, and yes, even mewithoutYou. I’ve got years of catching up to do.