Richard Youngs - Atlas of Hearts

Youngseh. I love Youngseh, me. I've been especially loving that Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits since Jagjaguwar did the world a favour and reissued it for those who missed out first time.. 'Radio Innocents', like - blinding! As far as the super broad scope of his various works go I reckon I'd describe this new one as mostly being somewhere between the near-conventional pop songwriting of that record and the experimental guitar-based folk of Sapphie but making heavy use of the multitracked vocals heard very prominently on the likes of Autumn Response. The result is completely hypnotic, beguiling and entrancing to my ears but, being very song-based, this isn't gonna be for anyone who's ever had issues with his vocal delivery which is definitely possessing of a peculiar quality, on the one hand there's definitely a sort of 'non-voice' thing to it but at the same time there are plenty of moments where to me he could almost pass for a classic folk singer, albeit an idiosyncratic one. Hopefully some of those doubters will see fit to give him another go with this one as they'll be missing out on a bit of a beauty otherwise..