The Young

The Young

Voyagers of Legend

Mexican Summer

Like more than a dozen other bands of their cohort, Austin punk quartet the Young got a kick in the pants from the compilation Casual Victim Pile, which dropped on Matador in early 2010. But in a crowded field, the Young stand out. Though many other bands play the same type of fuzzy, reverb-heavy garage rock, especially in Austin, few do it with the Young’s combination of passion and intelligence, and none have made a record with so much depth and self-assurance. 

With all the echo and noise on the record, it’s easy to conflate the Young with more conventional Austin garage-rock bands like Woven Bones and the Strange Boys. Idea man Hans Zimmerman, however, sounds like he’s taking cues more from the introspection of gen-X indie rock than from Nuggets primitivism. On the album’s runaway jam, “Bird in the Bush,” Zimmerman tosses off mysterious couplets like a young Michael Stipe:

“Secret handshake, crooked smile
Think about staying every once in a while
Nighttime, wet streets, spinning tires
All alone message signal fire”

The chorus is a raspy sigh: “Maybe I’ll just fade away.” Throughout, Zimmerman’s cryptic lyrics are set against roaring punk rhythm guitar after the style of Husker Du, with leads, like the piercing 12-second solo in “Smiling God,” worthy of Dean Wareham or Andy Summers.

The album’s first half is a treasure trove of these brief moments of genius. Side B, by contrast, consists of long, roaring, plodding songs that sound something like a cross between the stoned dirges of the Black Angels and the dreamy, wandering experimentation of Houston expat Greg Ashley. The two sides are tied together by Zimmerman’s skillful production, which uses natural tape distortion to smear together cymbals, drums and guitar into a muddy blare, while retaining the clear, intelligible outline of each individual instrument. The last three songs- “Nancy Sleeps,” “Voices Revealed,” and “Half Moon Burning,” comprise nearly half the album’s runtime, replacing the brisk, effortless catharsis of side A with an implacable psychedelic rock journey that is demanding, but fiercely, almost cruelly evocative.