Single Review: Youth Man – Five Songs EP

Following the departure of Youth Man‘s bassist last year founding members Kaila Whyte and Marcus Perks found a renewed sense of purpose in their reincarnation as a duo, with their live set up now completed by Dorcha‘s Meesha Fones keeping the band’s stage dynamic and sound as visceral as ever. With their music now solely creatively driven by the pair during the writing and recording process, there’s a new urgency and focus to their output that’s seen them re-prioritising where their energy is best spent, resulting in the experimental, sharpened and bristling new EP, Five Songs, that is set for release on 29th June 2018 via Alcopop! Records.

The introduction to Mainland has an almost melancholy Brechtian quality that is interrupted by a sharp stab of distortion, the song continues to keep you on edge with an off kilter feel and a disturbed undercurrent, Valley Girl picks up the pace but keeps the left field post punk feel of the EP intact. Five Songs is an EP of rage that is tempered by moments of dark grace, Constantly is a discordant bout of rage, I Don’t Know is a sinister melodic blast of staccato distortion and the EP closes with with the stripped down rage of Statuesque.

The Youth Man of 2018 would seem to be a very different beast to the one that’s gone before, the move to their new label would seem to have given them new urgency and a refocused approach to songwriting. Five Songs is an EP that I’d recommend to fans of jagged post punk and unconventional fuzz, especially by of the likes of Kamikaze Girls, Hands Off Gretel and Screaming Females. Five Songs is a challenging EP, you won’t find any feel good anthems amongst it’s grooves, but what you will find a band creating their own discordant soundtrack and doing it on their own terms.

Five Songs can be pre-ordered via Alcopop! Records here