Review of Welcome Home Album by All The Young

Indie rockers All the Young seem to have burst onto the music scene with pretty much no warning whatsoever. Their debut offering, Welcome Home, a title that rather presumptuously seems to assume that listeners will immediately be captured by their sound and feel like they've been 'missing out all this time', is a bold and intrepid release, with a sound and a feel that's sure to be taken notice of.

All The Young Welcome Home Album

It comes as quite a surprise, in all honesty. It's a very well produced album, in fact the production is astonishing, and that seems to draw attention away from the actual music. Surely it's better to write music that's enjoyable to listen to however it's recorded, than to make music that's produced brilliantly but is ultimately rubbish? Not that this album is entirely rubbish, but there are some problems.

The issue with this album is that it's just not as unique as the band seem to want to be. They claim, in their own words that they're a band with "the brains, brawn and balls to take 2012 and smash it into a brave new frontier of indie rock n' roll". The problem is, they haven't really done that. It's not a brave new frontier of indie rock n' roll, in fact the album can immediately be compared musically to some other rather famous bands, especially Biffy Clyro. This really draws away from the "brave new frontier" ideology that the band seem to want to put forward, in fact it collapses completely.

Happily, on the plus side the excellent production means that, despite the problems that comes with it, every element of the music is clearly audible, and within it there are some redeeming features. The vocals are excellent, and the presence of massive amounts of echo and reverb on the guitars gives the music an eerie, haunting quality, that's mournful in some places and uplifting in others. As an overall sound it really does remind one of Biffy Clyro, but whilst this puts paid to the unique ideology that the band want, it's not actually a bad thing because it does sound rather good.

So, it's not necessarily an entirely bad album, but it has slightly been overproduced which has given it the wrong angle to approach an audience from. With a little more care and consideration when producing the music, it might be received slightly better.

3/5

Sam Saunders


Site - http://www.alltheyoung.co.uk

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