Album Review: Young Man - Beyond Was All Around Me

Young Man have painted a nostalgic, sepia-tinged portrait of loneliness with the final instalment of their record trilogy and the ultimate departure of the band. After forming in 2009 around the soft, indie vocals of Colin Caulfield, the Chicago quintet decided early on to release three albums about growing up and then call it quits.

Beyond Was All Around Me has a reflective and melancholy mood throughout; the perfect score for bittersweet goodbyes. Opening track It's Alright introduces the band's ambient, layered composition; Caulfield's vocals are drawn-out like a slow-motion movie scene and with simple, yet loaded lyrics, comparisons to the coming-of-age tale about Holden Caulfield, The Catcher In The Rye, must be drawn. Most of the following tracks are drum and guitar-based indie-pop with a dreamlike quality, and while the vocal style and melodic lines beg for variation, there are some absolute gems. Being Alone has a contemplative, cinematic intro that opens into an epic, almost orchestral confession with a heartrending bridge, “Until then, I'll be hanging around/Waiting for someone to bring me down”. The track fades to an end with the gentle acoustic melody from the intro. In A Sense has some prodigious percussion and rhythms, while School brings in a horn section adding new textures to the sweeping violin, viola and cello. The album closes with My Days, a soft, jazzy piano-based ballad that once again builds up to a soundtrack of fullness, kind of like a boyish version of Radiohead.

Beyond Was All Around Me leaves the listener feeling weightless and reflective. It gives you that feeling that you've lost something, perhaps that spark we lose when we grow up, one that we never really knew we had.