Yves Tumor - Safe In The Hands Of Love (2LP)

Safe in the Hands of Love feels like the moment Yves Tumor stepped out of the shadows and decided to write songs that still distort the frame. Released on Warp Records in September 2018, it is the pivot from the hypnotic fog of Serpent Music to something sharper and riskier, a collage of noise, trip hop, bruised pop hooks, and shoegaze guitar that somehow lands as a coherent statement. It is also one of those records that still sounds nervy and new after years of listens, the kind of album that changes the temperature of a room as soon as the needle hits.

Start with Noid, the breakthrough single that made a lot of listeners sit up. It rides a loping beat and strings that flutter like a panic attack, while the vocal circles police fear and personal paranoia. It feels deceptively catchy, a tense pop song hiding hard truths. Then Licking an Orchid drifts in, a duet with James K that turns intimacy into a vapor, voices folding into each other until it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. These two poles, agitation and surrender, map the record’s emotional terrain. One moment there is a jagged riff or a clipped breakbeat, the next it all dissolves into synth haze and whispered confessions.

Part of the thrill here is how Yves Tumor treats genre like raw clay. The drums can be brittle and close, then a bass surge kicks up from the floor. Guitars smear the edges of the image, not as solos, more like streaks of color. There are ambient passages that feel like spent night bus rides, and then, out of nowhere, a chorus that sticks. It is a very Warp kind of alchemy, in line with the label’s history of reshaping dance and avant pop, but it is also personal. You can hear a songwriter emerging through the noise, testing how far a hook can stretch without snapping.

Critics picked up on that tension right away. The album earned Best New Music at Pitchfork and placed on several 2018 year‑end lists, from Pitchfork to The Guardian, not because it was easy, but because it made experimentation feel emotional again. Fans followed, and you could feel it at shows soon after, the kind of hush that drops when a song feels like a shared secret. Safe in the Hands of Love did not just raise Yves Tumor’s profile, it reset expectations for what the next records could do.

It is also a record that rewards a vinyl spin. The low end breathes, hi hats sit in the room instead of slicing through it, and those smeared guitars bloom into a wider field. If you are crate digging at a Melbourne record store or browsing vinyl records Australia late at night, the Safe in the Hands of Love vinyl is the copy you tuck under your arm and text a friend about. It pairs nicely with the rest of the catalog too, so if you like to buy Yves Tumor records online, consider how this sits next to Heaven to a Tortured Mind, a neat way to trace the path from spectral collage to swaggering rock theatre. Collectors who keep an eye out for Yves Tumor albums on vinyl know this one tends to vanish from bins for good reason.

What makes the album stick is the voice at the center. Not just the singing, though the singing is flexible and full of character, but the curatorial voice, the decisions to leave the edges rough, to let a melody brush up against feedback, to cut a section short just as it locks in. The sequencing has an instinctive pulse, heavy tracks followed by a breather, then a late record lift that sends you flipping the sleeve and starting again. Even the quieter cuts feel purposeful, like palette cleansers that set up the next hit of adrenaline.

If you came to Yves Tumor through later singles, this is the back catalog dive that makes the present click. It is a strange, absorbing, deeply felt album, one that wears its risks as proudly as its hooks. And if you are new and wondering where to start, start here. Put it on, sit with it, let it rearrange your ears a bit. Then, when you are ready to bring it home, the Yves Tumor vinyl you want is right in the title. Safe in the Hands of Love, on vinyl, is how this album opens all the way up.