THE YOUNG FRESH FELLOWS – I THINK THIS IS
The Young Fresh Fellows, twenty-five year stalwarts of Seatle’s indie scene, are a certain kind of eclectic rock band, which is both their biggest strength and their greatest weakness. Singer-songwriter/bassist Scott McCaughey writes great pop hooks, and the best kind of funny, poignant “weird America” lyrics (“Don’t want to wake up like the scary folk singer / on cable access” stands out to me, for some reason), but even his considerable talent can’t save the middling psychedelic boredom of tracks like Let the Good Times Crawl, Never Turning Back Again, and the overtly nostalgic Used to Think All Things Would Happen. Slow, roots-y guitar picking and repetition doesn’t quite cut it here. The band fares much better with anarchic punk (New Day I Hate, Shake Your Magazine), the vocal harmonies and chiming guitars of surf-pop (Suck Machine Crater, Your Mexican Restaurant), and their native territory, college-rock (Lamp Industries is excellent, as is The Guilty Ones, After Suicide and the classic-rock ballad If You Believe in Cleveland – not coincidentally, McCaughey’s toured in-band with R.E.M.). The problem with this kind of grab bag is not that it’s unpleasant; rather, it’s that you’re left wanting more of the stuff they do so well, and less of anything else.
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