PREMIERE | Yea-Ming & the Rumours, 'I Can't Have It All'

Corner store post-ups with Yea-Ming & the Rumours; photographed by Corey Poluk

Every so often there is that record that everyone is patiently anticipating. An upcoming release that spreads by word of mouth from those of discerning tastes, circulating via the usual media channels, a record that resonates with the entire world. A record that revels in the imperfections we perceive and feel (whilst pulling off the hat trick of creating something that is akin to near perfection). A record that encapsulates the how it started, how it’s going dichotomies of life narratives and yet delivers so much more than can be easily reduced to a meme posted on your social media timeline. A record about wanting and working with what you have to rise to the occasions of your own choosing.

The record in question is I Can't Have It All from Oakland’s Yea-Ming & the Rumours that sparkles with the honest sentiments that mirror life itself. It is the record that despite the title gives you so much from its roster of talents. Lead by Yea-Ming Chen, the Rumour team is made up and reinforced by Sonia Hayden, Eóin Galvin, Luke Robbins, Jen Weisberg, Jeff Moller, Jasper Leach and more. It follows So Bird… from 2022 with the sound that Yea-Ming & the Rumors have wanted to make since their inception from the mid-2010s. I Can’t Have It All is the record that has it all: the hesitations, the excitement, the apprehension, the ecstasy, the agony, and everything beyond and in-between.

"Pretending" pays an homage to the prices we pay for feigning to be something we are not in an opening number that dazzles with a fancy free frequency of shoulder shrugging abandon. The title track tackles the negotiations, compromises and sacrifices that we contend with as part of life's multiple contingent plans that makes desires and goals feel forever out of reach. Yea-Ming's creative style and sound that was established around 2015 with Sign On My Window shines even bolder and brighter throughout the record. Ode to the annoyances that certain people bring can be heard and felt on "Ruby", as "I Tried To Hide" sways with the sliding guitar ballad toast to inherent vulnerability, while "Big Blue Sea" makes the vast seven seas that surround us feel a little closer and our universe a little cozier (yet mysterious all at the same time).

Hanging about with Yea-Ming & the Rumours; photographed by Corey Poluk.

The ballroom jangle glow shines sincerely on the desire to discover common ground on "Can We Meet in the Middle", as impasses are investigated in earnest on the inquisitive "How Can I Leave". The peppy "Before I Make It Home" scoots with heart like a 2-cycle motorbike engine, as "Old Frog" chimes sweetly in a playful and imaginative manner, before the surf rock waves of "Somebody's Daughter" seeks betterment beyond the breakers and breaks of a brand new day. The penultimate song "Alice Sings" that lifts up the record toward celestial heights, right before Yea-Ming brings it all back home with the reprise of "Pretending" that completes the circle of the album like a timeless piece of perfect pop that the twentieth century's songwriters and their songbooks never gifted us with. I Can't Have It All is a record that manages to give you everything you could ever want and more. Yea-Ming & the Rumours deliver album pop at its finest, delivering all the involved facets that adhere to art emulating life and vice versa.

The radical pop realm of Yea-Ming & the Rumours; photographed by Corey Poluk.

Yea-Ming Chen provided some exclusive reflections on the new record I Can’t Have It All and more:

Yea-Ming Chen & rose; photographed by Corey Poluk.

Notes on your own creative and collaborative evolution.

In the past, I let a lot of (usually negative) feelings about my songs stop me from making it past the ideas stage…I had a really perfectionist mentality — thinking that if it wasn’t just-so in whatever standard I had created for myself, that it wasn’t allowed to exist. For better or for worse, I grew out of that mostly because I don't really have the time to worry about it anymore.

Rose gestures by Yea-Ming Chen; photographed by Corey Poluk.

Thoughts on how shifts in perspectives, wants and needs impacted the new record.

The last record So, Bird… was written during the pandemic, in a time of quiet and a lot of extra space, and I didn’t have access to my band, so the result was pretty spacious, slower and somewhat folkier and fairly experimental for my general tendencies. When it was time to make I Can’t Have It All,  I was starving for faster songs and kind of tired of experimentation. I wanted to go back to my roots, my 1-6-4-5 chord progressions, a faster tempo filled with guitar downstrokes and simple arrangements; which is why this album sort of became my pop record. There is still some residual snobbier experimentation that happens in ICHIA, but I was making a concerted effort in trying to keep it more primal, and less cerebral.

Yea-Ming diptych; photographed by Corey Poluk.

Current inspirations from the Bay Area and the whole wide world that lend kernels of hope and light for you.

This is totally random, but one of my piano students (8 years old) wrote a beautiful haiku and submitted the poem on her own to a contest happening in her city and won. To celebrate the winners of the haikus, the city hosted a haiku hike. They went into nature, and bunch of kids read their haikus at their destination. I didn’t go, but I was so moved by the story when her mom told me about it; that there are people out there in the world, creating little events like this. Someone out there is encouraging art and nature walks and sharing that experience with children. In a time of war, of just so much awfulness, I am moved that there are people out there creating a world for children to express themselves, to grapple with difficult feelings in art and nature, and in the meantime forming connections within a community.

Yea-Ming & the Rumours’ new album I Can’t Have It All arrives May 24 via Dandy Boy Records.