My first review for Sloucher. I was drawn to the title – shades of Bambi and space cadets. The genre fitted too – folk, acoustic, rock.

We listen to a lot of that kind of music in our house – a youthful male vocalist with a good guitar sound and a rocky band. In fact, I have one I made earlier at home who has just turned eighteen. I liked their website – some nice photos and a blog that shares their experience of recording the album. So, favourites at my house include Thomas Dybdahl, Dallas Green and Bon Iver, but my own musical inheritance goes much further back than that.

One of the pleasures of having children – for me anyway – is the way you can bounce past and present musical tastes around with them, tracking influences and discovering new talent.

So it didn’t take me long to start to like the album. There’s a really sweet and lovely guitar sound in ‘Triumph’, ‘Shadows’ and ‘Sugar is Sweeter than Gold’.

Young Astronaut use intrumentation rather than vocals to build the tension. I can hear echoes of the Moody Blues or even the Yardbirds in ‘The Artist and the Villain’. There are some dark lyrics, where again the music rather than the vocals builds the atmosphere. ‘Death in the Foothills’, ‘Broken Teeth’, the titles tell a story and it’s no love song.  Shades of Iggy Pop‘s ‘The Passenger’, and Kate Bush‘s ‘Running Up That Hill’.

The lead singer’s voice works really well on ‘Shadows’, frail and light, it soars soulfully to the end of the song, Bon Iver style. And there’s even a hint of Syd Barrett in his voice and the lyrics of ‘Cloud Collector’ – never a bad thing. Looking at their website, they seem to be pushing ‘Hey Little Ghost’, but for me, the stand out track is ‘Harmony’.
Lots of promise, lots of potential. I have no idea whether they recognise the influences I can hear – maybe they have passed down to them second or even third hand, but it’s meant to be a compliment.
I’d go and see them, I will listen to the album again, and for some reason my favourite line is ‘Oh my god, this is spectacular’. I blame the space travel.

Words: Nicky

Young Astronaut Website. Soundcloud. Spotify. Twitter. Facebook. Vimeo.