Young Hunting stand at the intersection between dream-pop and gothic folk. They’ve been standing there for a while, their first long player was released five and a half years ago. In order to stay alive in the interim, members of the band played with the likes of The Pharcyde and Syl Johnson, while Hari Rex and Ilya Mxx wrote the songs that became True Believers.
For an album that looks into the void of life, seemingly disappearing into the mist while love falls apart, the music is deceptively light and airy. Your heart may be breaking, but there’s still time to play it with grace. It’s a gentle walk into the void as evidenced by Lawd where “…we’re dancing right off the globe, and into the ocean, no more shall we pray.” Undoubtedly a bleak look into world, yet without the feeling that all is lost.
Walking on the edge of a pin, the band navigates the lyrical morass of a world that doesn’t seem to be particularly welcoming. Mxx offers that Crimes is, “about the comfort/horror of numbness and idleness.” Suggesting that when he first played the song for Hari, “it sounded like Skip Spence doing ‘Puff The Magic Dragon.”
Influenced by 60s and 70s California pop, along with Nick Cave, Jason Molina and Can, one can see how theirs is a world often shaped by pain, leavened by music with heart. As combinations go it’s an interesting blend, somewhat like Brian Wilson on downers, harmony-laden songs for a post-apocalyptic future.
Young Hunting carry a vision of a past that never really was, and a future that ends staring into a void. Yet along the way True Believers offers musical moments that connect the dots between the past and the future with just enough hope to keep us engaged for another day.