• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Oct 14, 2013 Web Exclusive By Kate Bennett

They might hail from Watford, a smallish town near London whose musical output is pretty much limited to The Spice Girls’ Geri Halliwell and an unlikely number of successful mid-Noughties screamo acts, but girl power and thrashy hardcore riffs are far from the order of the day for mesmerizing British band Younghusband. Starting out as the bedroom project of Euan Hinshelwood, Younghusband have since expanded out into a fully-fledged live band whose gentle psychedelia-infused rock has been compared to the likes of cult ‘80s dream poppers Felt and ‘90s titans of shoegaze Ride.

Younghusband haven’t had nearly as much fanfare in their native England as other members of its burgeoning neo-psychedelic and shoegaze scene, despite their music being a good deal better than some of its most hyped acts (Charlie Boyer and The Voyeurs, we’re looking at you). There are a number of tracks on their debut record Dromes that are clearly coming from the same sort of place as some of Younghusband’s contemporaries, such as Temples and TOY, but for the most part Younghusband take a less poppy approach.

Ride’s fingerprints are all over Dromes—in Hinshelwood’s cool, airy vocals, in the focus on moods and sounds over big hooks and riffs­­­­—but they’re faint, blurry fingerprints rather than something crime scene investigators could nail them with. Where Ride’s songs sprawled, Younghusband’s are concentrated and self-contained; everything feels meticulous and carefully judged. Whether strumming away energetically, as on “Silver Sisters,” or swamping everything in a quagmire of My Bloody Valentine-worthy distortion, as on “Constantly in Love,” the whole album is suffused in a kind of repetitive, trancelike detachment—particularly the tense, hypnotic “Divisions,” all cold metronomic bleeps, warm, sporadic guitar strums, and increasingly unnerving atmospherics striking in the background. Keys swirl and quaver, voices converge and harmonize, guitars twang and fizz; the rhythm section unobtrusively grounds everything, stops it all from floating off on a self-generated breeze of euphoria and irresistible melody. Catch it now before it drifts away. (www.young-husband.com)

Author rating: 8/10