Young and Sexy Albums (4)
What The Critics Say
Young and Sexy have built a uniformly excellent catalog of brilliantly conceived and executed pop music for adults. Full of sophisticated arrangements, heartbreakingly felt and delivered vocals, and tricky, memorable melodies, their albums have been like a dream come true to fans of '80s pop groups like the Go-Betweens and Prefab Sprout. Like those bands, Young and Sexy have kept things interesting by making changes from album to album both in sound and in lyrical outlook. On their previous effort, Panic When You Find It, the band scaled back a touch on the arrangements and went straight to the bleak heart of things musically while lyrically touching on matters both personal and political with real insight and feeling. On The Arc the group revisits the lush and full sound of earlier album Life Through One Speaker using loads of reverb in the mix and plenty of atmosphere throughout, providing a dramatic background for their new lyrical approach. Forsaking the intimate and emotionally naked feel of past records, Paul Hixon Pittman's words are a knotty tangle of imagery it might take an advanced degree in medieval history to decipher. There's talk of brimstone, bison, fires, floods and war as well an underlying current of struggle with religion. Subjects worthy of discussion for sure, but on a pop album like this, words so intensely personal and ornate serve as a barrier to emotional involvement on the part of the listener. The band's previous work was so direct and real that it's difficult to accept their pulling back from hands-on reality and cloaking things in mystery. The music draws you in with beautiful sounds and the words push you away; it's like a cruel joke. Too bad, because Lucy Brain's vocals are as wonderful as ever, she comes as close as anyone could to breaking your heart with lines like "The elixir's clear but swallows all shards and barbs/Our lady tips back the chalice." In fact, the entire band sounds committed to the songs and that's what keeps the record from failing. See, for all the problems one might run into with the lyrics, the sound, feel and performances found within are so compelling that it's possible enjoy the record and be moved by the sound, even while hiding from the words. And the moments like "The Echo," where they come out and say what they mean, are magical as ever. Consider The Arc a noble try at something new and epic, but also a bit of a downturn from Young and Sexy's usual brilliance. ~ Tim Sendra, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
2006's Panic When You Find It is another sophisticated, smart, and tuneful album from Vancouver's Young and Sexy. On it, the band refines their already pristine sound, tightens their lyrical scope, and comes up with a truly heartbreaking and musically breathtaking album. As the stark black-and-white artwork on the sleeve foreshadows, almost all of the lightheartedness that colored their previous work has disappeared and in its place are dark lyrical themes (the bruised lips and soldiers of "Your Enemy's Asleep," the wrenching loss of "Without Your Love," the bittersweet sadness of "Turn on Your Weakness"; even the less-than-serious, country-influenced. office rock-ballad "Satellite" is dipped in regret) and mid-tempo tunes so autumnal you can nearly smell the burning leaves. The richer and more restrained instrumentation of Panic deepens the feelings of melancholy the lyrics inspire, most of the songs have the kind of epic layering and classic chamber pop arrangements that can go so wrong in the hands of bands who don't have the songs or sure-handed restraint to make something real out of their influences. Tracks like "5/4," "The Curious Organ," and "Conventional Lullabies" are perfectly constructed with soaring choruses, subtle instrumentation, and vocal harmonies that can raise goose bumps. Co-vocalists Lucy Brain and Paul Hixon Pittman blend like siblings rather than the ex-lovers they actually are, and their reserved and calm vocals allow the melodies and arrangements to deliver the emotional punches. Indeed, their harmonies on "Turn on Your Weakness" will rip the heart right out of more vulnerable listeners, and their vocalizing on "Trespass on a Thought" conjures up the Go-Betweens circa 16 Lovers Lane which is just about the highest praise one can imagine for a band like this. Young and Sexy has grown older and more real, and Panic When You Find It is an album that proves once again that the band has few peers when it comes to making smart and sophisticated adult pop in the mid-2000s. ~ Tim Sendra, All Music Guide
'Life Through One Speaker'
Release Date 10/7/2003
Tracks 10
Label Mint
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Lots of people make adult pop these days; precious few do it as well as Young and Sexy. Hailing from the dead center of the indie pop world in 2003, the Vancouver band follows up its remarkable debut, 2002's Stand Up for Your Mother, with an album that is remarkably just as good. Life Through One Speaker is everything the first album was (intelligent, catchy, emotional, inventive) and then some (epic, beautiful). The band sounds more at ease in the studio, and as a result the songs sound more relaxed and fuller. The extra coat of professional studio gloss that might sink most indie pop bands seems to suit them quite nicely. The band sounds like a classic mid-'80s pop group (Prefab Sprout, Beautiful South), only without the cheesy '80s technology getting in the way. While the record lacks a killer single, it sports exquisite songcraft and performances from the opening notes of the stately "Oh My Love" to the fade of the sweet self-referential ballad "Young & Sexy." Lucy Brain's sweet, clear vocals are more prominent on Life; she takes most of the leads, leaving Paul Hixon Pittman's flat, cynical vocals to be spice to her sugar. She is especially wonderful on the ballads "Lose Control" and the surprisingly political "More Than I Can Say." Best of all are her offhandedly beautiful then all-out rocking vocals on the disco-fied then rocked-out "One False Move." Listing all the highlights of an album this good would take far too many words but a few tunes stand out: the crashing epic "In This Atmosphere" (which Pittman helms with style), the previously mentioned "One False Move," and the twisting "Herculean Bellboy" (which is the track on the album that sounds the most "Vancouver"). Simply put, this is a great record, destined to be on year-end best-of lists, sure to be traded back and forth between love-struck friends, certain to be sadly ignored by the masses. ~ Tim Sendra, All Music Guide
'Stand up for Your Mother'
Release Date 3/5/2002
Tracks 12
Label Mint
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
With little fanfare and even less commercial notice, Vancouver, British Columbia, emerged as the pop music scene du jour in the earliest years of the 21st century. From Destroyer's Thief to the New Pornographers' Mass Romantic -- and really almost anything else issued under the local Mint Records imprint, for that matter -- no other North American city released more truly great records pound for pound during the same time frame. Add Young and Sexy's debut to the above list. Between frontman Paul Hixon Pittman's adenoidal vocals, witheringly cynical lyrics, and gorgeously Beatlesque harmonies, Stand up for Your Mother could well be a Destroyer record, and that's high praise indeed. With Lucy Brain's winsome harmonies gilding the lily, these 12 songs are simultaneously beautiful and tough as nails -- and, given contemporary tastes, no doubt much too smart for their own good. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
