The Youngs — n/t

Guitarist Timothy Young won my heart when I saw him perform with Wayne Horvitz' Zony Mash ensemble. I knew the CD's but this band truly came to life in the live-situation, something I can give Timothy a large part of the credit for because his performance was much wilder than the recorded versions seemed.

On this record he joined his wife Eryn to form 'two one-man bands in one', according to the bio at the Mimicry website. Both earned themselves a name in the Seattle music scene working with artists like Sun City Girls, Tucker Martine, Crack Sabbath and Eyvind Kang. Eryn accompanies her pleasant voice with drums and samples, Tim plays guitar, basspedals and sings along, the endresult is 'pop' in the original sense. You know, like what you would have to call 'rock' to set it apart from the boy- and girlbands and bubblegum artists that represent 'pop' these days. The problem is that The Youngs aren't 'rock' in the sense of driving drums and distorted powerchords.

Personally I'm not an expert in this field. The material on this debut reminds me of the poppiest aspect of Moloko (like in Breakdown), a less wheezy Blonde Redhead and at one time even The Pretenders crossed my mind (in The Killing Of The King). At the surface the the music seems rather friendly, melancholic (although a song like The Industrial Way does rock) but if you delve deeper there's some serious dissonants and distorted sounds buried in these well-produced popgems. So it can happen that a dreamy popsong like Again For Love drifts off in a moody soundscape. Of course The Youngs rendition of Carpenters classic (or Dionne Warwick... or Isaac Hayes, or Kramer... or God knows whose version your most familiar with...) Walk On By is not as cosy and neat as the original. The album closes beautifully of with the wonderful and dreamy Pre-Emptive Love.

Like I suggested earlier, this music is a bit out of my regular diet and I needed a few spins to get accustomed to it, listening to it on headphones helped me a lot in that respect. I think it's adventurous popmusic that deserves a broad audience, particularly those who think that popmusic these days is nothing but a well-marketed fashionshow.