Yoste’s try to be okay EP is here for your Valentine’s Day despair

The perfect soundtrack to you saying you totally don’t even care about today anyway.

February 14, 2019
Yoste’s <i>try to be okay</i> EP is here for your Valentine’s Day despair Alex Carlyle

Brisbane-raised singer-songwriter Kurt Sines writes on his website that Yoste, his pseudonym, “RHYMES WITH LOST,” which is just as much a poetic choice as it is a matter of pronunciation. His songs are mostly glacial — so unhurried that they’d seem ambient if they weren’t broken up by muffled electronic beats and brooding, Auto-Tuned vocal lines. On his debut EP, try to be okay, the 23-year-old often sounds exhausted, even when he’s seemingly trying to write himself out of what he calls “a severe sense of listlessness and general lack of purpose.” On the downcast R&B-pop of “Blue,” he croaks: "We try so hard but stay bereft.” So, sure, Yoste also rhymes with “flossed,” but dental hygiene doesn’t convey existential anguish half explicitly enough.

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It’s not hard to pick out Sines’s key influences—pianos and vocals from Blood Bank-era Bon Iver, a timbre from James Blake. It’s music, then, for an extremely solo Valentine’s Day—”Wake up / You’re stuck on your own,” he sings on “Moon.” Add it to the playlist.

“This is my first EP, and I view it very much as a definitive example of the project’s beginning... my beginning as a musician, really,” Sines wrote in a statement. “The songs are built on and drawn from my concerns and experiences over the past couple of years, not only as a new artist but as a person on the cusp of adulthood. Thinking about it now, I suppose that’s why most of the instrumentation is so ethereal, very much trying to capture a sense of nostalgia and childlike wonder. At the same time most of the lyrical content is quite adult. I was grappling with an overwhelming fear of mortality, questions of identity, alienation, inadequacy — all the fun stuff. What is lovely to reflect on, however, is that some of the songs make sense of some of those feelings, and even arrive at something resembling a solution. Where those moments exist, I’ll leave to listeners to interpret.”

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Yoste US tour dates

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3/16 - San Francisco @ Cafe Du Nord (w/Elder Island)
3/17 - Los Angeles @ The Moroccan Lounge (w/Elder Island)
3/19 - Nashville, TN @ Basement East (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
3/21 - Orlando, FL @ The Social (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
3/22 - Tampa, FL @ Crowbar (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
3/23 - Athens, GA @ 40 Watt (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
3/26 - Charlotte, NC @ Visulite (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
3/27 - Raleigh, NC @ Lincoln Theatre (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
3/29 - Boston, MA @ Middle East Downstairs (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
3/30 - Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
4/2 - Syracuse, NY @ Westcott (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
4/3 - Columbus, OH @ Skully's (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
4/5 - Madison, WI @ Majestic (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
4/6 - Detroit, MI @ El Club (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
4/23 - Las Vegas, NV @ Bunkhouse (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
4/25 - Chico, CA @ El Rey (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
4/26 - Santa Cruz, CA @ The Catalyst (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
4/27 - San Luis Obispo, CA @ Fremont (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
5/1 - Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom (w/ Slow Magic and Shallou)
5/2 - Seattle, WA @ Barboza (w/Running Touch)
5/3 - San Francisco, CA @ Popscene (w/Running Touch)
5/4 - Los Angeles, CA @ Moroccan Lounge (w/Running Touch)
5/9 - Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge (w/Running Touch)
5/10 - Chicago, IL @ Chop Shop (w/Running Touch)
5/11 - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry (w/Running Touch)
5/16 - Boston, MA @ Great Scott (w/Running Touch)
5/17 - Washington, DC @ U Street Music Hall (w/Running Touch)
5/18 - Brooklyn, NY @ Zone One at Elsewhere (w/Running Touch)

try to be okay is out via Akira Records on 02/15

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Yoste’s try to be okay EP is here for your Valentine’s Day despair