It’s a usual story. A bunch of young dudes grow up in New York City, form a rock band. They’re influenced by a lot of cool bands, and they want to have a cool name that they can make a cool logo out of. NYC is full of bands like that, and since the city is full of inspiration, a lot of really good music is made. But the city can also sometimes be hollow, and unoriginal. The Young Things’ new album Hello Love / Goodbye Sexual does take a lot of queues from great sources, but ultimately only scratches the surface.
The majority of the album has a super tight, well-produced feel to it. Despite the persona the band seems to want to give off, of being bad boy partiers with all that swag and jazz, all the parts of their songs lock in together precisely. They know how to play their instruments well, and they clearly spend enough time playing as a band to do what they’re doing. Which isn’t very punk, but it will get you on Fuse’s Top 20 Countdown. That alone is a shallow reason to judge a band, but what starts to become irksome on the album is the way they try to incorporate all these different styles and meld them with stadium rock.
At times, this does work well. After an intro ditty that is the ghost of a Queen song that everyone knows, they immediately hit it hard and get feisty with “All Human Life,” one of the standout tracks on the record, with a video that doesn’t do the song much justice. Single “Talking To Loud” has got an extremely catchy hook, and it’s easy to imagine some fervent shout-alongs to this one at live shows. “Goodbye Sexual” has one of the best elements on the whole record, with the way they brilliantly panned the bass and guitar lines. The echoing background vocals thing they did is kind of weird, though. “Sore Eyes” gets synthy, and starts to space out into a Pink Floyd call back.
Often, the music is way better than the lyrics. Songs “Lucy” and “A Girl Named Fallujah” are storytellers about the lives of and interactions with these girls, both with dynamic vocals and probably great to rock out to live after a few beers. But paying attention to the words becomes a turn off. The band has noted in interviews that their songs are largely true stories, and if that’s the case with these, it’s hard not to feel sorry. The stories begin to feel crass and mocking, demonstrating that these are people kept around for the sake of entertainment, and to make the speaker feel better about not being as much of a wreck.
Much of the rest of the album is bulked down by the heavy-handed shout outs to influences. “Hello Love” has got to be an overt nod to The Beatles, both in title and sound. The Young Things maybe make this one their own more than the others, with a snazzy rhythm and tempo change up in the chorus, albeit somewhat abrupt. They attempt a blues jam with “Easy to Lie,” but the soulless lyrics and style falls flat. The blues chords soaked with reverb and lots of wah wah effect is cool, and the organ is a great touch, but there’s no grit to the sentiment.
Closer “A Long Time Ago Tomorrow Morning” is an immediate reminder of Elliott Smith, that leaves more to be desired. Like many of the preceding songs, it feels incomplete and unfulfilling. Hello Love / Goodbye Sexual is an album full of coarse references to other artists and other sounds, but The Young Things don’t own them enough. It’s interesting to hear what they tried to do, but overall just didn’t pull it off enough, didn’t make it believable enough. But then again it is still entertaining, just like that Lucy girl and that Fallujah girl.
