Making Paper

Album review

On this outing, experimental rocker cum balladeer Richard Youngs turns in the acoustic guitar he used to such stunning effect on Sapphie and exchanges it for the shimmering timbral effects of a piano. Like Sapphie, this set is comprised of only three pieces. Two of them -- "Warriors" and "Only Haligonian" -- are quite long, and the third is a two-minute interlude called "The World Is Silence in Your Head." What is so striking about Youngs is not his obsessive intimacy, though it is certainly notable, as it is in other artists. What makes Youngs so different is his obsessive poetry, moving through repetitions of phrase and line, changing dynamics and creating tiny variations in his lyrics in order to draw the listener so far into his world that the two become seemingly inseparable. As each line is played, it disappears, wafting into the ether save for the pedal-point echo on the piano as a new one, similar but far from the same, replaces it. The accent points in the long pieces create startling sequences over their extreme lengths. There are harmonic changes in the chord lines, where augmented ninths and flatted fifths are added to minor and diminished chords to expand their color range and give a deepening context for the lyrics. This is especially true on "Warriors," but works to the same effect in "Only Haligonian" with a much more melodic setting. Here, scales breathe through one another and patterns become ostinato considerations as the vocals slip into the background, becoming part of the music, although -- if one pays close attention -- they can be deciphered. And no matter how stripped down his constructions are, by their very length and topical concerns they are romantic excess personified. And, as if that weren't enough, "The World Is Silence in Your Head," for all its brevity and quark strangeness and charm, comes off almost as if it were a pop song and, as such, it is ragged but beautiful.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo