Darkness Of The Young

I know there are albums that are deemed as 'growers'. Ones that take their time getting their hooks into you, so surreptitious are their charms that you are addicted before you have had time to think about what's been placed in front of you. But rarely could you say that an album was a 'creeper' - where each song oozes its way over you and enters you through every pore and orifice, like the black oil from The X Files.

The Young's Voyagers of Legend is definitely a creeper.

I heard this Austin Texas band first over at Raven Sings The Blues via the track 'Phoebis Cluster', which is also featured below. I was immediately intrigued - the song has that eerie vibe that the Pixies' 'Gouge Away' has, that Lynchian noir nightmare that slinks along in the shadows before jumping all over you. I delved into the band a little more, and there isnt much to be gleaned, other than they are signed to the great Mexican Summer, which helped put out the LP. So I scoured the WWW to find the album, and whilst the player I found on a nondescript site (which no longer seems to work) wasn't altogether functioning properly, it was enough to get me a couple listens to it.

Voyagers of Legend is definitely a time capsule album, taking me back to the early 90s. But instead of focusing on high school slacker ennui a la Japandroids, this is delving more into the flannel shirts of the grunge generation with more than a pinch of the aforementioned Pixies (a commonly held belief that they were the genesis of grunge as it were). 'Bird In The Bush' to me is the single track on this album that comes across as proper single material, and yet it is the weakest, whilst tracks like 'Smiling God' and Sunburst' rollick along like a burnished black steam train with roadkill in its grill.

Good luck find much on the Web about The Young - just do yourself a favour, head over to Mexican Summer and get the album. Ive got the itch to hear it again - its crept inside me and it will not let go.

The Young - Phoebis Cluster