Norwegian pop outfit Young Dreams channel all the buoyant oddities of ‘ONE’-era Yeasayer, with the added bonus that the spirit of The Beach Boys has hijacked their vocals.
On a surface level, it's an incredibly easy and rewarding listen.
The band’s songwriting chops are evident on Between Places, and it’s refreshing for a debut to err on the side of being too ambitious, when so many new indie bands nowadays suffer from the opposite problem. But the content of these songs doesn’t quite earn their epic execution.
This is not a bad album, and these are not crappy songs. But this is a profoundly derivative album, and these songs do not offer us anything new.
#49 | / | Under the Radar |