Doping off Lo-fi: An Album Review of Yot Club’s “Bipolar”
Yot Club’s lo-fi melodies represent the widespread sentiment in youth of trying to just feel okay as social media makes self-love and positive mental health a challenge.
Yot Club is the lo-fi band of Ryan Kaiser, who made the TikTok popular song “YKWIM?”
This song is part of Yot Club’s 2019 album, Bipolar, that includes 6 songs. However, none of the other songs from the album have reached the popularity of “YKWIM?” with over 87 million streams on Spotify.
Lo-fi music is more popular than ever before, as a pacification for those living in our increasingly dynamic and stressful world. The lo-fi genre started in the 1950s as a term for low-fidelity as young musicians with lower quality equipment created songs. As social media has led to an epidemic of body dysmorphia and spiraling mental states, lo-fi music, like “YKWIM?” has reached unprecedented levels of popularity, and rightfully so.
The joy in Yot Club is that his music is relatively simple- no crazy beat drops, no changes in melody mid-song- and all of the songs have the same mix of instruments. His songs favor a guitar paving the melody, whether it be a plucking surfer rock or a lazy synth dream, with drums offering a clean beat that wonderfully complement his signature distorted vocals that blur into echoing techno. The exploration of these same instruments brings continuity between the tracks and albums and allows for the listener to relax, and just accept the songs as they are. To peacefully coexist and flow with the melody and beat, rather than to strain for meaning or importance. His lyrics follow this ideology, as he brings relatable feelings of melancholy into light but offers easy-going wisdom, effectively both addressing the problem and solution, to leave you in a sated state.
Now while I say that his music is simple, I mean that the songs won’t particularly trap you in its emotions. The music lets you flit between subdued melancholy and contentedness, and to just accept that that is how you feel in the moment, and then to move on. These kind-hearted melodies settle you in comfortably neutral emotion, while being constant enough to make focus on work easy. As a lo-fi band, Yot Club excels at making songs to release your dopamine, which improves focus and happiness. Due to this lo-fi-effect, many go to this type of music for studying or doing work. In this sense, Yot Club’s PG lyrics are perfect for anyone, of any age, to listen to when trying to get their focus on.
The first song in “Bipolar” is “Landlord,” which narrates an insomniac who is dreaming getting sleep.
This song features many of the elements of “YKWIM?,” with the dreamy melody and imagery. The song is something that definitely fits the lo-fi archetype, as the consistent instrumentation makes it easy to listen to the song, but to not actually listen too hard to it. It is inoffensively bland and a solid start to any study session. I find it charming how even the person writing up the lyrics did not know what he was saying at one part, which shows how cathartic the song can be, as you will not be trying super hard to figure out the lyrics, as the slurring dreamy vocals will lull you into dopamine dreamland.
The next song, “Go Slow,” features a higher tempo than “Landlord”, which is ironic considering the title is literally “Go Slow.” This song offers the lots of wisdom I previously mentioned, with delightfully affirming lyrics such as: “Just take your time, you're doin fine.” Today’s digital world can often make people feel inadequate, like they are not working hard enough, or are not as good as others, after seeing the posts of others enjoying their “perfect” bodies or luxury items. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook even has documents showing that social media platform, Instagram, is toxic for teens. As teens, growing pains and finding your sense of “you” is a struggle that is exacerbated when seeing only the successes or picture perfect images of the highly curated content of influencers. I think this song speaks to the journey of an individual, that cannot be measured against others as everyone is different. Sometimes just hearing that everything will workout can help soothe anxiety about worldly issues.
The third song is - drum roll please- “YKWIM?” and I’ll be honest, I am a sucker for this song. Something about it definitely releases my dopamine. I love the dreamy downcast vibes and I think it acts as a very good counterbalance to the rest of the album, which has more upbeat, techno songs.
The overall flow of the album is very enjoyable, letting you dabble in different emotions, but not to the extent of being overwhelmed. An album of low-key pop melodies, all perfectly not distracting, is unique to Yot Club. Other lo-fi artists that aim to mix in other types of music, such as Joji, have songs in their albums that have more extreme melodies, which break your concentration. Instead of focusing on your work, you are now listening to the music. Joji’s album “BALLADS 1″ has the non-distracting lo-fi songs, such as “YEA RIGHT” but also has “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK,” his most popular song that has more contrast between the versus and the choruses, that makes you listen to the music.