Richard Youngs – Autumn Response
With the nights drawing in and temperatures (and leaves) falling it’s hard to think of a more appropriate musical accompaniment to the season of “mists and mellow fruitfulness” than Richard Youngs’ latest album (just out on Jagjaguwar Records).
It’s full of Keatsian melancholy and with the simple yet effective use of double tracked slightly out of synch vocals, Youngs also creates his very own ‘wailful choir’. Folk music is the touchstone here but Richard Youngs has never been one to be in thrall to tradition. The ambient experimental strands he weaves into the songs means they have more in common with New Weird America than Ye Olde England.
Although he was born in Harpenden, England, Youngs has been based in Glasgow, Scotland since the 1990s and the Celtic drone is a major influence on his prolific output. If you type in Youngs’ name into the Last.FM music search engine, practically all the ‘similar artists’ they list are stateside. However, there is one Brit they would do well to add and that is Roy Harper.
Harper is now in his 60s but his recent performance of his 1971 classic ‘Stormcock’ at Joanna Newsom’s recent Royal Albert Hall show alerted a new generation of listeners to how much this maverick voice shares with the neo-folk wave that has flourished over the past decade.
If you listen to Harper’s eloquent ‘When An Old Cricketer leaves His Crease’ from his 1985 album (titled ‘HQ’ in Europe) alongside Youngs’ elegant 16 minute closing track (Something Like Air) you hear the same wistful mood and the nasal tone of one half of the vocals means that this could easily pass for a duet with Harper.
This beautiful track with its simple, repeated chords is hypnotic in its minimalism – a quality presented in more condensed form on the preceding tracks where 5 of the 9 songs clock in at under 3 minutes.
With this album, Richard Youngs continues to match quantity with quality and to seal his reputation as one of the most genuine performers on the planet right now.
