Young Heretics - We AreThe Lost Loves

Tue 20th Apr, 2010 in Music Reviews

Melbourne duo Young Heretics are an interesting band. Comprising of Matthew Wright (of Getaway Plan fame) and girlfriend/sister/lover (this is up for debate – the band shy off any questions regarding their relation) Kitty Hart, they create a sound that rebels against everything an avid fan of The Getaway Plan would want. Their debut album, We Are The Lost Loves, sways and thumps between the ethereal and the intense, while remaining in their own brand of dark, somewhat-dreamy pop.

The album opens with Animal War – a short, dreamy a capella track that sees Hart channel some Bjork-like vocals. Familiar, previous released material is quickly provided in the form of album title song The Lost Loves. This introduces the powerful vocal combination of Wright and Hart, which features throughout the album (although it’s not without solo songs – see Animal War and Dark Prince) and is one of the most impressive and likable features of the duo’s sound.

Guitar effects meet and rise above a simple piano backing, never interrupting the commanding duel vocals. Risk/Loss is the pick of the new material ( The Lost Loves, Dark Prince and Bones of a Rabbit were all introduced on their EP The Dreamers ), combining all the best elements of a Young Heretics song – soaring vocals that rise and fall to meet each other, violent drumming, simple pianos and a brilliant use of samples and synth sounds.

Dark Prince is arguably the weakest song on the album, but importantly strips back to a basic piano and vocal combination, with Wright taking over vocals for the entire track. The duel vocals return for the dreamy Noah’s Ark, which is complete with bells, strings and what may well be a harp. The Wright-piano combination is reinstated for I Know I’m A Wolf, but too much greater effect. Vocal manipulation and better songwriting show that the frontman and a piano can be equally as compelling as the intense Bones of a Rabbit.

Dream Sequence interrupts the run of songs but provides a welcome relief to the intensity of the album, which can be a bit draining. A track in a similar vein to Risk/Loss, Bones is ten times more extreme and forceful than anything you’re likely to have heard since the first time you played Paranoid Android. The drum-bashing close to the song is dramatic and theatrical (and possibly melodramatic) as anything to out of Melbourne recently.

By contrast, the next song, 010100110100111101010011, seems a boring, shorter version of Noah’s Ark. The album concludes with the almost radio-friendly and disappointingly corny Come Together and almost Radiohead-like Trapperkeeper (it closes with a puree of drums, trumpets and piano, not dissimilar to the ending of Kid A’s The National Anthem). Trapperkeeper is by no means an inadequate ending, but it certainly isn’t the most powerful finale to an album that seems to thrive and survive on a powerful sound.

We Are The Lost Loves shows the good and bad sides of Young Heretics, and in this sense it’s a record that is very true of the band. However, the intensity and drama involved in some songs can be misconstrued as pretentious, instead of passionate. While slightly hit-and-miss, this debut album is a solid beginning to Wright and Hart’s promising project.