Yumi Zouma Present Tense

Yumi Zouma’s silky guitar-pop is more punchy and clear-cut than ever on the band’s fourth album. Living between London, New York and their native New Zealand, the quartet initially worked remotely on Present Tense, after their 2020 album, Truth or Consequences, emerged at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sessions in four different countries yielded guest string, horn and piano parts, yet those extras are woven subtly into the sleek structures of these songs, letting singer/keyboardist Christie Simpson’s delicate vocals remain the guiding force. Echoes of The Pretenders and even Fleetwood Mac gild tracks like “Give It Hell” and “In the Eyes of Our Love”, while the closing “Astral Projection” summons the propulsion of New Order. The album’s lovelorn centrepiece, “Where the Light Used to Lay”, sees Simpson pleading with the subject to drop their camouflage. It’s a ballad so confident and classic-sounding that it wouldn’t be out of place on a stadium stage.