|
***If the Captain and Tennille were into dark progressive space rock, they might have really lit the world on fire. Thirty years later The Youngs emerged to fill the void. Their catchy, well-crafted songs make you shed a tear for love and death, Seattle-sadcore style. This is a dynamic duo (a married couple in real life) who fearlessly chart the astral regions, and tell tales of living and dying on a fucked-up planet like this one, with love as the backseat driver. Owing more to Grandaddy than the White Stripes, this band knows how to sound good; their songs conjure the melancholic beauty of a couple witnessing the end of the world. With lyrical topics ranging from futile space migrations to the power of love in the face of being psychically vampirized by modern cities, to the Skull and Bones Society, to a beautiful and sincere suicide pact between lifelong partners, The Youngs' music quite literally sparkles and shines with bountiful appeal. Especially if that stuff called emo only pisses you off. Those of us heavily burdened with the armor of creeping cynicism are going to register a few ecstatic blips on the EKG with the advent of the Youngs-- but just in time a doped-out version of "Walk On By" arrives to send us whistling back into our post-everything comas. Beauty and brains: this is the stuff of balance. Live, the golden-voiced Eryn Young sings and plays drums and samples simultaneously, with significant other Tim Young, an accomplished Seattle musician, at her side playing guitar and bass pedals and singing simultaneously. It's like two one-man bands in one. After hearing this great-sounding and well-produced record no one won't believe they can pull it off. |
