★★★★★
On Yellow Peril, Nat Myers addresses anti-Asian narratives through blues and poetry on an album that’s really about “Yellow Power”.Could you speak about the United States’ military policy in the Vietnam War for 2 minutes and 20 seconds without pause or repetition? Possibly. For most people, unlikely. I use that time-marker because it’s the length of one of the most famous anti-Vietnam War songs, ‘Fortunate Son’ by Creedence Clearwater Revival, which you’ve probably listened to countless times, either proactively or by osmosis, without even thinking about it. Hard times are at once both ephemeral and enduring, and the artistic documentation of their impact on our society are a great tradition in producing more permanent, wide-reaching judgements on the responses of our law-makers to times of turbulence than any official documentation could ever attempt to. There’ll be much to talk about with the pandemic, along with everything else our fraught times have to offer us. On Korean-American singer Nat Myers’ album, Yellow Peril, he takes on the anti-Asian narratives that spread, often driven by those law-makers. “Started in China, lordy, you headed to my backyard, lordy, coming off the boat, headed up across the land, lordy,” he sings on the title track. The track is uncompromising and frenetic, the deep, rumbling command of his voice creating an ominous feel. In fact, this song was worked so hard during recording that producer and Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach’s fingers began to bleed. Still they rumbled on.

Credit: Nat Myers