CD: 86763-2
RELEASED: 2005
LABEL: Epitaph

01. Shadowland
02. Skeleton Jar
03. Lillian Lies
04. The Frankston Line
05. Baby Body
06. See-Saw
07. Drowned
08. Last Quarter
09. Someone Else's Dream
10. Why Don't The Buildings Cry?
11. Piece Of Wood

Three years after the band's debut album, and following the departure of longtime member Andy Cassell, Youth Group has reformatted, reformulated, and reintegrated its musical vision. This time, it's dangerous. If the darkened cover and alienated art work don't tip you early, this is a dark album. Gone are the well-lit celebrations of urban & eastern, and gone also are the eight-minute-plus slabs of epic guitar swordplay. Tightened, taut even, but with the unmistakable melancholic voice of Toby Martin remaining pure and potent, it's as if trauma has shown them the only way out of hell is to make their own. It all starts with a drumbeat, a jangly Byrds-like guitar wrangle, and then Martin comes over, "lost in this purgatory, " and finally the full engine roar comes in for the chorus, "Shadowland, " the song's title, repeated over and over, with only a sliver of hope, and finished with a confirmation, an embracing of the possibility. Perhaps the beauty of this album is that every note seems well-placed, every strum thought through, economic in the precision of the pop-coated anger. The songs give you no chance to get lost and no chance to escape their tales and tunes. These aren't melodies played by rote, and Martin's narrations never sink to cheap rhyming populism. Instead, each thrust seems to affirm Youth Group's existence, even under the weight of the band's fractured experience.

Influences / Similar Artists:
Obi, Arcade Fire, Brian, New Order, The Chameleons