Album Review: Young Statues - Young Statues

Run For Cover Records' Young Statues bring a distinctly indie approach to their eponymous album – a short burst of lo-fi pop music with a much darker edge than the musicianship would have you believe.

Sitting somewhere between the Shins and Death Cab for Cutie, Young Statues mix jangling, almost twee guitars with staple lyrical topics such as moving on and being hurt in the first place. Album opener ‘Spacism’ manages to be both understated and epic at the same time, with the delicately sung vocals hitting that much harder because of their almost soporific delivery. Carmen Cirignano’s voice is oddly familiar and when he croons: “I won’t be another person’s shoulder/ you need somebody?/ Call a friend” it smacks of truth – the most important characteristic when trying to relate to music.

It takes talent to have a record drip with passion when barely a chord is strummed in anger, but there are moments on Young Statues' debut record that they do just this. If you give your band name to a song on an album of the same name, you better make sure it represents you perfectly, and the track ‘Young Statues’, shows the band at their best. It picks up the tempo after a couple of slower tracks, including the slight mis-step of ‘Bumble Bee’, which possibly veers too far into twee and inoffensive territory.

‘We Trusted Everything Enough’ might have been plucked straight from a Manchester Orchestra record but any doubts about the song’s worth disappear as soon as the beautiful piano fill joins in around three-quarters the way in. These guys do stripped back damn well. The jauntiness returns with ‘Pretty Girls Make Raves’, a rock-solid radio single if ever there was one. The album peters out to ‘Meet Me On The Hudson’ a typical slow-building album closer, which again draws from the Andy Hull school of songwriting.

Influences are easy to pick on this album, and in between a couple of tracks that miss the mark, there’s a understated, fantastic album.

As debuts go, it’s mighty impressive and Young Statues will be on people’s radars after this genre-spanning effort.

4/5

'Young Statues' is out now on Run For Cover Records.

Nick Robbins