Yello Flag CD - Import

Additional Tracks

Yello: Boris Blank, Dieter Meier (vocals); Chico Hablas (guitar); Leos Gerteis (clarinet); Beat Ash (percussion); Billy Mackenzie (background vocals).
German remastered edition features three bonus tracks--"The Race" (Break Light Mix), "Wall Street Bongo," and "The Race" (Club Mix).
Flag was a watershed album for the group. On one hand, it is a refinement of all the ideas the band had been following through the '80s, on the other, in the wake of their high-profile success with "Oh Yeah," Yello had reached the point where ideas turned into self-parody -- the cover art of Deiter Meier and Boris Blank pulled together into a human knot is horrifically appropriate. Nothing is a surprise here, apart from how "The Race" is a Xerox of their own 1981 song "Bostich." Tracks like "Of Course I'm Lying" are empty exercises in suave, like late-period Roxy Music without the pedigree. Billy Mackenzie returns to provide backup vocals on the more romantic tunes. This isn't to say that the album is a dull listen -- "Tied Up," repeated here three times on a nine-track album, is a fascinating collage of Afro-Cuban rhythms, rain storm effects, drums nicked from a Broadway revue, monkey chatter, basso-profundo lyrics, and screams. Similar thick, eclectic production dogs each track like cologne on a lounge lizard -- too much of a good thing. Yello saw the decade out with Flag -- they haven't found their way back since. ~ Ted Mills
This is Yello's most dynamic album, with excellent composition. Picking highlights would be difficult, since the songs segue, and the album just begs to be listened to as a whole. ~ Vladimir Bogdanov
Yello jumped feet-first into Latin American waters with the zippy FLAG. Much of this recording is an epileptic rush of massed congas, shakers, thumping beat boxes, chorused voices and, of course, Boris Blank's endless supply of electronics. Dieter Meier contributes the lion's share of voices--he has an incredible variety of them in store, alternating from fierce falsettos to throaty suggestiveness with ease, his abilities easily the equal of Blank's instrumental virtuosity.
Look to the cheeky guitar bits, fibrillating rhythms and massed horn samples on the single "Tied Up," and the hipster-doofus, Southwestern synth dance-pop of "Blazing Saddles," for key slices of Yello pie. But turn the tables (or flick your remote) slightly for indications of past glories on "3rd of June," which offers clacking rhythm guitars, Blank's scary, rushing wind synths, and even bursts of (semi) heavy metal. Wacky, weird, wild, and wonderful.