Saturday, January 23, 2021

Yung - Ongoing Dispute


I've written about Yung before. Way back in 2015.  They're a guitar band from Aarhus, Denmark. Maybe not as Yung as they once were, but they still seem quite young to me. These things are relative I suppose. Their guitars clash and chime as they always did. Their vocals ,delivered by frontman Mikkel Holm Sikjaer, consistently urgent, intense, but most importantly, commited.


On latest album Ongoing Dispute, they add another chapter to their story and it's a worthy, (in the positive sense), entry. The guitars, bass and drums, brew up quiet storms in which Sikjaer intones, struggles, and makes his case tellingly.

It's a record which will probably remind you of others. Strangely, I was minded often of Grant McLennan and early Go Betweens and that band's strained, pained but poetic presence. More obviously, Yung's sound echoes any number of great Nineties European alternative guitar bands, Darryl-Anne, Deus, Bettie Serviert. 


There are other reminders. There's a definite suggestion of Radiohead's initial rage and intent. Also, earlier travellers down existential roads, Magazine, Television. Yung dance to Joy Division's radio. You get the sense oflines of thumbed paperbacks on their bookshelves.This is well read, independent rock music.


 Yung are good enough to deserve to be considered on their own terms. And  Ongoing Dispute is a record worth coming back to. I will.





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