If the fundamental of what makes something punk is artistic expression entirely on your own terms, then Yung certainly fit the bill. Even if their sound doesn’t always meet the genre’s sonic criteria. The embryo of Yung first began to form as songs recorded by frontman Mikkel Holm Silkjaer on his own, long before it was a physical band. A collection of songs recorded by Mikkel that only reached other people’s ears when his dad stumbled upon them after borrowing his laptop. Yung quickly grew to gain actual members, but still remains primarily a vehicle for the outpourings of Silkjaer’s psyche.

Like fellow Danish punkers Iceage – whom Yung are condemned to always be compared to – Yung have moved away from their early gnawed and brittle bursts of post-punk to make something more ambitious in its arrangements. Yung have made this leap in the space between those promising early releases to their first international album. A transition that took Iceage three albums to make. All kinds of instrumentations are added to give the album texture. The slide guitar on ‘A Bleak Incident’ and the gentle piano chords and trumpet refrain ‘The Child’ takes as its climax, give the album a luscious quality.

The influences of the fuzzed-up riffs of garage rock, the fragile compositions of indie and the upbeat melodies of pop punk can be heard in Yung’s music. But it’s all been filtered through their uniquely wide-screen sensibility. This is punk uprooted from the claustrophobia of the decaying urban environment and reimagined for the expansive and open-aired landscape of Scandinavia. With its rich greens, dramatic, rolling mountain ranges, and calm winding rivers. You can practically feel the cool sea breeze coming off ‘Morning View’ with its gentle acoustic strumming.

While their first EP Alter kept things short and sweet and These Thoughts are Like Mandatory Chores experimented with song structures and lengths, A Youthful Dream manages to find a nice compromise between the two. The songs are punchy but complex. Songs such as a ‘Uncombed Hair’ pile up riff after riff into densely packed arrangements, alongside softly cooed backing vocals and

Mikkel’s hoarse, gruff voice. His vocals are more than capable of producing enough rawness in the melodies without compromising any of their intrinsic catchiness. But sometimes he reaches further than his abilities allow, his voice catching or ending up sounding strained. In ‘The Hatch’ it’s ideal for the low, mumbling register of the verses but struggles when he reaches for the higher notes in his range. What should be a soaring, bombastic chorus ends up coming across a bit like a sustained whine.

Writing lyrics in a second-language, especially ones that deal with such personal subject matters, must be difficult and, to a degree, alienate yourself from your own experience. But Mikkel handles the challenge admirably. His lyrics often deal with the tensions and contrast between the interior world of his thoughts and the exterior one, and how the two both battle to try and control the other. Whether on ‘Pills’, which takes aim at society’s blanket solution of medication for dealing with mental health, or in ‘Commercial’ which documents the subconscious and appalling influence of advertising on our daily lives. On the other side of the coin, in ‘Morning View’ Mikkel croons “A quiet world / in a dominant mind”, the psyche tries to impose itself out of the world, and bend it to its will.

Whatever ‘The Sound of Being Okay’ actually sounds like, this song is certainly not it. One of the album’s most anxious moments and probably its most arresting, guitar lines twitch while the strain in Mikkel’s voice sounds almost like he is wincing in pain: “Can you hear that sound / deep inside your mind / It’s not the sound of being okay”. Likewise the closing title track is Yung sounding their most downcast. With a thudding rhythm and one sickly chord strummed over and over on the first beat, before the song lurches over into its chorus. Overall the album needs more moments like this, where those calm and pleasing Scandinavian landscapes become overcast by violent and turbulent storms.

While it manages to sound anthemic without being cloyingly sincere or emotionally manipulating, sometimes A Youthful Dream can sound too upbeat or pleasing for its own good.
Louis Ormesher

Website: yungbandstuff.com
Facebook: facebook.com/yungbandstuff
Twitter: twitter.com/yungbandstuff