SUBSCRIBE Youthmovies - The Naughtiest Girl Is A Monitor (Drowned In Sound)
Simon Jay Catling
 Well, here we are now; entertain us. Youthmovies have become yet another name to be hyped, enlarged, spun sideways and rammed down our throats in 2008- the year of overblown predictions. It’s just as well for them that they can follow most of their peers and deliver on their promise, and what a delivery it is. The Oxford quintet featuring Andrew Mears, yes from THAT band Foals, manage to combine more creative ideas in under five minutes than many of the latest crop of NME Award winners could come up with in an album.Beginning with a series of squiggles and beeps is hardly the most audacious of starts to a song, but here it works well as a calm before the storm, with little hint of what is to come. The slow gradual build up continues into the verse with Mears almost laidback delivery suddenly giving way to tumultuous guitars delivered with rushed passion, before the whole thing releases with a big breath and turns into something else. What does it turn into? A damn catchy pop song with foot tapping quality that catches the listener completely by surprise that’s what; it’s not the fact that Youthmovies have welded together two very different styles in the space of the opening three minutes, it’s the ease and fluency that they manage to do so, changing gears smoothly, and repeating the trick a minute later as a wonderfully unhinged instrumental comes in replete with a romping brass section, providing amusing imagery of the band rocking out at a nearby park bandstand. The range in styles undoubtedly shows a debt to their influences, and yet by throwing them all into the cauldron, Youthmovies have actually come out with something better- 65 Days Of Static but with vocals and a keener knack for melody, Foals (sorry) but with a harder hitting edge that will doubtless leave indie club revellers the nation over confused as to whether they should mosh or dance- hell just do both. As Andrew Mears almost whispered refrain ‘it’s becoming clearer that it’s not the end of the world’ fades out it’s quite apparent that something special has taken place within these four and three quarter minutes. Never mind taking us from A to B, this is a single that picks us up at A and bypasses most of the known alphabet before dropping us somewhere very rarefied and very new. What makes this even more exciting is that ‘The Naughtiest Girl Is A Monitor’ isn’t even the best song on the album, and if that doesn’t leave you salivating for more then I don’t know what will. Watch the video here. Youthmovies Myspace  |
No comments:
Post a Comment