Yonaka

When you’re in it for the long haul, you can’t expect the journey to always be smooth. But the hope is that, for every bump and every swerve, you emerge out the other side with your eyes fixed evermore confidently on the path: full steam ahead, with your fellow travellers by your side.

When beloved Brighton rock trio Yonaka released their 2023 EP ‘Welcome To My House’, they readily admit that they were in treacherous waters. Their 2019 debut LP ‘Don’t Wait ‘Til Tomorrow’ had cemented their place within an exciting new wave of British guitar bands, its heavy sonics and cathartic lyrics digging into frontwoman Theresa Jarvis’ anxious psyche and emerging with a legion of committed fans, plus glowing reviews from Kerrang!, NME and beyond. Follow-up mixtape ‘Seize The Power’ found them breaking out of their own mental prisons with anger and relish, its title track landing on some of Netflix’s most visceral shows including A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder as proof of their growth. But fast forward just two years, and the footing of the group - completed by guitarist George Edwards and bassist Alex Crosby - was feeling altogether less certain.

“Being in a band for that long, you grow up together and you’re making all these changes and you get to a point where you question if you’re still in the right place,” considers Theresa. “We’ve now been together for 10 years, and you go through so many different feelings in that time: you’re each other’s world, and then you don’t like each other, and then you love each other again. We really went through it and then we dropped a member. But when you finally air your problems and think about them properly, you realise you’re not ready to stop.”

But nearing the edge of the precipice for Yonaka changed their trajectory entirely. Realising what they were close to losing made the three old friends knuckle down and really fight not only for their band, but for the sound and the energy and the excitement that they’ve always wanted to bring to it. “Since then, it’s almost been like we’ve found each other again, and we’ve found the storyline and the music,” Theresa says, “and I don’t think this record now would have come without it.”

The record in question is Yonaka’s turbo-charged second studio album ‘Until You’re Satisfied’. It may be arriving a full six years after their first but, as George understandably points out, “it doesn't really feel like a follow up because we’ve done so much in between”. An integral lesson from that half decade came from learning how they didn’t want to work this time around: with outside eyes and ears influencing their decisions and having their say. And so the band, now operating in a decidedly DIY manner with Alex at the production helm alongside a little help from Dimitri Tikovoi (Placebo, The Libertines), decided to keep their burgeoning record entirely under wraps. “We didn’t tell anyone we were doing it,” Theresa nods. “We didn’t need influence from outside because we know who we are and we’ve fallen into the sweet spot of all loving the same thing right now.”

Whereas, in the beginning, part of Yonaka’s appeal was in their collision of influences, blending heavier rock and indie with bright earworm hooks, on ‘Until You’re Satisfied’ they took immense satisfaction from their united front. In their Brighton home studio writing room, and then out at the residential recording studio of Belgium’s ICP, they began to lock in to what it truly is that makes them special. “It’s the push and pull,” she continues. “One minute, it will be delicate and then it’s chaos, and it’s when we have the mixture of those things that we’re at our best: fragile in places and a circus in others.”

Lead single ‘Problems’ exemplifies this thrilling duality perfectly, its creeping introduction - just vocals and bass - exploding into a blast of wild, visceral purging. ‘Problems’, too, opens the door for the lyrical themes of the album; the first time that Theresa has ever really steered Yonaka through matters of the heart. But while ‘Until You’re Satisfied’ is undoubtedly a record about lust and love, found and lost, don’t go expecting an album full of soppy romance. “This record’s about love but it’s not all gooey - it’s the dirty bits and the harsh bits that happen to everyone whether you admit it or not,” she says. “If I think back to the first album, I was very much the victim and you can hear it; the songs are sad. Whereas now, I don’t feel like I’ve written any of these lyrics from that point of view. It’s an empowering record and I’m enjoying the difference. I feel like the owner of it now.”

On the gritty, distortion-laced ‘Cruel’, she talks of a relationship that can “make you turn animalistic and feral; where you can be ripped apart whilst ripping someone else apart as well”. Industrial and sexually-charged, ‘Cruel’ almost found an unlikely home outside of the record too… “During the recording process, we flew in and out of London to audition for Eurovision with it,” Alex reveals. “On the Eurovision forums, loads of people were putting our names in and the fans were asking for us, which is why they reached out,” Theresa grins. “But that version had a different chorus, so I’m glad we didn’t get it in the end.”

Influenced by the sounds of the alternative ‘90s and artists like Alannis Morissette, The Cardigans and Radiohead, the album takes in pure sassy swagger on ‘Miss Millenial’ but also epic, stadium-sized balladry on ‘Best Of Me’. ‘Hit Me When I’m Sore’ builds through driving beginnings into a final crescendo of catharsis. “It’s about being a professional at being hurt,” says Theresa. “When you know how it feels, then it can sting but it doesn’t break you.” Meanwhile ‘Trouble Follows’ is perhaps the album’s most cheeky, playful moment: a swaggering, bluesy wink that sets its crosshairs on an intoxicating bad influence.

Brimming with confidence throughout, Theresa’s own journey from ‘Don’t Wait ‘Til Tomorrow’ to now mirrors this path. “I just wanted to relax into myself,” she says. “I’ve been dying my hair and trying to look like something or someone else for so long. I wanted to think about what I actually like and who I actually am - to just strip it back and see what’s there - and I really feel like I’ve done that with the guys on this album as well.”

‘Until You’re Satisfied’, then, is Yonaka’s joyful reclamation of themselves, wrestled from the brink and pushed into its truest form yet. Satisfaction guaranteed.