Yves Tumor - Kerosene!

I can do anything. I can be what you tell me to be.

Album: Heaven to a Tortured Mind [4th album]
Recorded: Berlin & Los Angeles
Genre: Rock, Art Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Hypnagogia
Album Release: April 3rd 2020
Single Release: March 9th 2020 [2nd single]
Length: 5.06
Producer: Yves Tumor & Justin Raisen
Vocalist: Yves Tumor [age 30] & Diana Gordon
Label: Warp Records

Music Video


Live in San Francisco from 2022

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: 29,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 1,300,000 +
Paste Magazine Best Albums of 2020: #20
Pitchfork Best Albums of 2020: #7
Stereogum Best Albums of 2020: #13

Credits & Gear

Bass, drums, drum machine, guitar, organ, synthesizer (Yamaha DX-7)

Details

• The song is about a dangerous lust that burns red hot like kerosene. In the music video Yves, who is playing a character, and a woman are having sex next to a crashed car. It could combust at any moment but the pair continue as the sex is all-consuming and dangerous. The car is red, as is the woman's dress, which denotes lust as well as danger and the woman has a tattoo of tiger claws on her breasts showing the animalistic nature of the affair.
  
  The song is a duet featuring a man and a woman singing about a relationship. This is followed by an uninhibited electric guitar solo, reminiscent of 80's stadium rock, which serves to create the same primal effect as in the video. It sounds kinetic, as if the plans of the first verse have been put into motion. Even the volume of the track increases in what becomes an orgyiastic climax to the songs first half and the guitar continues sporadically throughout.
  
  The girl who is red hot like kerosene lives in the imagination of the singer "I can be your fantasy". She is his motivation as she drives his behaviour to a dangerous extent. This is represented in the music video by him speeding in a sports car while on a test-ride. She is a representation of his primal masculinity "I can live in your dreams."
  
  He engages in risky business in order to prove himself to "her" when she is but a part of himself. Is he enough of a man? Many men are led to unfortunate ends by such drives. In 'Kerosene' Yves is giving form to a part of himself that he knows is destructive but, nevertheless, can't help indulge. Just like in the film The Sixth Sense (1999) no-one responds to the woman in red except Yves because she isn't really there. All the while, Diana Gordon, the real relationship, chases after him while he's with her, a figment of his own imagination.
  
  Towards the end of the video there's a close-up of two smashed eggs, which ostensibly represent two heads smashed on a windscreen but on a deeper level represent the end of Yves' chances to procreate with the realistic girl. Also, in typical Hollywood fashion, which shows the video's cinematic under-pinnings, the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. The video starts with a car crash and ends with one, which suggests the singer hasn't learned from his behaviour and the cycle is doomed to repeat itself. Yves keeps chasing after his raw desire instead of accepting a compromised reality.
  
  
• There is a humorous part in the video where Yves takes off his shirt and his nipples are censored. It's unexpected because we have already seen nudity at this point. Luckily for us someone decided that Yves nipples were a step too far.
  
  
• The song captures the feeling of lust and is driven by the raw power of the emotion. The feeling is the centre of the piece and the song is put together to express the emotion in all its explosive glory. Lust is a dangerous thing, which isn't to say anything new, but the emotion is felt keenly by the singer so why not express it? People sing about love so why not lust? 'Kerosene' is a song in the same vein as 'Roxanne' by The Police and should be enjoyed as such.
  
• Diana Gordon is a Grammy award nominated song writer from New York who has produced several songs in the psychedelic rock style. The lady in red from the video isn't Diane.
  
  
• You never know what you're getting when you press play on a Yves Tumor record. His music is electronic rock and psychedelic soul mixed with a punk filled hypnagogia. Which is to say, a steady mix of musical styles he has somehow managed to fit together into a coherent whole. Yves himself (he doesn't care about pronouns) is a non-binary person who has lived in Tennessee, Italy, Germany and San Diego which informs the fluidity of his sonic pallette.
  
  Yves Tumor (real name Sean Bowie, no relation) makes music which is hard to define but soulful, as it's raw emotion laid bare, but it's done in a way that shouts its truth at the listener as opposed to the pained whispers of other singers. It's also artful, as there's a theatricality to his performance. On stage he wears a variety of outlandish costumes and deliberately paints himself as the freak, the weirdo or the outsider. He goes out of his way to stand out, unashamedly putting his otherness front and centre for all to see as if to say he's proud of his otherness.
  
  I think Yves' music isn't autobiographical in the narrative sense but it is in terms of raw emotion. The feelings are his and he plays them out in a series of loud, changing unabashed characters which seems akin to the 21st century fashion for fluid identities. This is amplified by the changing style of his music as he can cycle through multiple genres in each album.
  
  I, at times, wonder if there's something more softly spoken under the affectations, as if I want to hear an album by Sean Bowie the person, not Yves Tumor the persona. However, this is to miss the point. The value of this type of performance is that it permits the quieter parts of the personality to shout, and there's something worthwhile in listening to the things that are rarely heard.
  
  The French name Yves means "yew", an evergreen tree, and Tumor refers to a cancerous growth. Which is to mix the natural with the diseased, and this dichotomy between desired and undesired makes itself known throughout the artists work with album titles such as 'Heaven to a Tortured Mind' which refers to hell.
  
  

Artwork