American Man

The Yawpers

180 GRAM Vinyl LP includes digital download version of the album

Bundle with a Yawpers bandana or American Man poster to save a few bucks

The Yawpers' Bloodshot debut album

Full Description

The Denver-based Yawpers’ unique set up---overdriven acoustic guitars and drums, equal parts frenzy, solemnity, and menace---alchemically binds snotty rawk ‘n’ roll to the hopeful and fuses the elemental power of the RIFF to the intimacy of a sunset-bound road trip. “Doing It Right” is, at once, deeply soulful and an urgent call to action, with brutal and bluesy freakouts that slide by the Morrison Hotel (with the Meat Puppets and Spahn Ranch in the rearview mirror). “Burdens,” with its pound on the dashboard scream-a-long chorus, is a dark and dislocating stab at the teenage ode to the fresh outta school good times: Maybe my dreams turn to burdens instead / But I’m only 17 /I’m headed for the sun / and I’m getting out of here while I’m young enough to run

The cathartic “3 A.M.,” with its powerful and vivid sonic scope, leaves us lying on the stage with them by the end:

Well maybe I’ll turn to Jesus, maybe I’ll cash it all in / I can feel the darkness coming, sitting here at 3 A.M.

The disdain and resignation permeating the running-out-of-power ballad “American Man” has us wondering if we’re waving our lighters in celebration or disgust. Are they building a temple or are they burning it down? This is my home but I’m a stranger here / If I had any left I’d cry American tears

And shit, man, “Tied,” with its S&M take on “When The Levee Breaks” goin’-to-Chicago bluster needs to be heard by a crowd packing 40,000 one-hitters.

With a voice weaving between a folk club’s smoky rasp and an arena’s bombastic howl, singer/guitarist Nate Cook is a lounge lizard charmer, a smooth snake-oil salesman, and sharp-tongued, keen-eyed poet. Battering-ram drummer Noah Shomberg also brings a refined touch exhibiting his formal training. Jesse Parmet’s guitar is an aural cross-section of the ferocious and raw proletarian roots of Uncle Tupelo to the burning-hot thrashings of Hot Snakes, as much Son House’s delta as Hell’s Angels’ Altamont. Together, the Yawpers have forged a well-defined identity: a general disdain for the conventional with a sonic depth that never loses its accessibility.

American Man is the band’s second full-length release. They’ve self-released an EP (Savage Blue), a full-length album (Capon Crusade), and a bootleg covers record (Good Songs/Shitty Versions). The Yawpers formed in 2011 when Parmet and Cook played together at the only speakeasy in Boulder, CO. They added a drummer to the mix and a new trio was born.

The band’s name is a nod to Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”: “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

Short Description

American Man is a delight, a beautiful and extremely angry record…a gritty and fierce masterpiece of roaring guitars, fast drumming, beautiful singing, in the way that whiskey-scarred voices can be beautiful when they are good and true.

— St Louis Magazine
Some songs follow that path from folk to electric blues to something near punk; some start out rowdy and get even rowdier. Every escalation, pause and lunge does its job.

— New York Times
In totality, American Man is akin to that dangerous older cousin you had growing up. He drinks and smokes too much and pisses off a lot of people. Two parts self-taught intellectual, one part deviant, trying to hang with the rough crowd he runs with will land you in the klink, but he’ll also bail you out without telling your folks.

— Surviving the Golden Age
The Yawpers highlight all that is good with the rowdy bar band vibe as they pull off a Steve Earle fronts Old 97s sound with a blue collar work ethic of Uncle Tupelo.

— The Fire Note
This is rock and roll, the right way – the way we first experienced it as kids – songs about women, life, aggravation – at a breakneck pace and full-on throttle.

— PopDose
The songs shift from tender to pounding almost instantaneously and without warning. But the Yawpers never fall into cliché or dumb down their creativity, which makes American Man a success on every level.

— American Songwriter
Populist lyrical themes of golden era folk-Americana are contrasted beautifully against the majestic rhythms of heavy metal and punk.

— No Depression
What makes it a truly exciting album is how ounce for ounce the musical accompaniment matches the intensity, depth and beauty of the lyrics.

— No Depression
A road trip across a psychedelic wasteland, though they skew a little more Hunter S. Thompson than Jim Morrison.

— The AV Club
The Yawpers make the Bloodshot Records debut, American Man, as multi-formatted saviors here to earn the devotion of those already saved by rock’n’roll and blow the doors wide open for anyone who has not yet heard the message.

— The Alternate Root
"Tied" is a really intense and dark piece of Alt. Country worthy of Nick Cave if he’d come from Nashville…"3 A.M" is a sonic tour de force from start to finish detailing Teenage Angst in all its depressing glory. Imagine if you will Kurt Cobain doing a Country album and if he had, it would be chock full of songs like this.

— Rocking Magpie
If this was released in the ‘90s it would have been called hard alt-country, but in the genre-free '10s all you need to do is click play and not worry about categories. I love straight-ahead rock like this, and after listening to American Man a few times, I sure do love me some Yawpers.

— Dagger Zine
Don't let anyone tell you that real rock and roll is dead. On their new album American Man, The Yawpers take rock and roll and add a healthy dose of blues for a sound that just begs to be blasted out of windows.

— AXS Entertainment
Punk culture, American roots music and Walt Whitman's poetry all come together on the Yawpers' American Man, an album that mixes high-brow smarts with down-home stomp.

— Rolling Stone
An album split evenly between the boozy, blitzed energy of last call and the hard-won clarity that comes the morning after, just as the hangover's about to set in.

— Rolling Stone
The result is as sweaty as it is smokey, a raucous collection of tracks that is certain to start some shit.

— Consequence of Sound