Review Summary: An album sprawling in every conceivable dimension the spring season has to offer, boasting the best parts of its influences though their own unique and approachable filter.
Shoegaze is a very specific genre. It’s not a broad and general genre like Grunge, shoegaze completely embodies and represents a scene and style that is defined by a bold time-stamp. Because of this, when incorporating influence from a genre as identified with a certain time into a band’s sound, or all together attempting the genre completely, the influence has to be measured with care.
When in a sense trying to revive a genre as specific as shoegaze, bands make the mistake of letting their influence get out of hand due to a lack of breathing room to work with the substance of the genre’s aspects, as they are so specific, and they end up imitating and trying to relive everything about the essence of the sound, except of a lesser and un-inventive quality.
The Young fortunately do not fall into the open trap of attempting to relive 1991 when establishing a primarily shoegaze oriented sound. The Young take the best and most classic sounds and elements of Shoegaze, Dream Pop, and Ethereal Wave, but doesn’t use the grainy and dark atmosphere of the late 80’s and early 90’s as a vehicle to drive their sound. Instead, The Young retains the bleak distortion of the droning guitars, and the lite as a cloud touch of dreamily soft psychedelia, but opts for a bright, upbeat, and summery production to act as the foundation, breathing with organic and natural life through an indie rock and indie-psych like atmosphere reminiscent of a spring mood.
The record feels free, and has a scale comparable to that of one being outdoors, in that it is apparent that there is an unlimited and expansive world around itself, but doesn’t necessarily size itself to encompass these heights, allowing this feeling serve as an expansive contrast to the experience.
The high points hands down lie with the guitar work, varying among the tracks from wailing and screechy with noise in raw fashion, to near hypnotizing trance that despite while droning, flows like a smooth breeze. The faint jingles of wind-chimes that appear at subtle points on the album literally sound as if wind is blowing through them. Although the band’s sound as a whole is pleasantly nostalgic of their idol’s glory days from the ambient pointers derived from My Bloody Valentine and The Smashing Pumpkins, right down to vocal delivery of Hans Zimmerman that strike up memories of Jane’s Addiction.
The record’s production doesn’t feel right in your face or ears, it feels relaxing, and a bit of a distance away as if floating a few feet off of the ground, and this distance compliments the album’s wide sense, in that feeling further away, it allows an accessibility for the listener to register the space Dub Egg spans.
Dub Egg soothingly drifts by like a faint and soft breeze, and even with the droning of the guitars, songs don’t end up dragging. The good-natured spirit of the album mixing up the pace allows for songs to go by at rate that gives off a sense of uppity progress, Instead of riding the melancholy-laden mood waves that made original shoegaze feel so lengthy and draining.
Dub Egg takes a familiar sound, and puts it within the fresh context of an enjoyable atmosphere that brings into sunny light new emotional and visceral angles for very old music staples, balancing the influence it takes from it’s inspiration while at the same time making it all the more transcendent.