Young and Sexy, The Arc

by dave heaton

Back in 2002, Young and Sexy’s debut album was filled with melodic pop songs tilting towards Beach Boys, Zombies, etc. They’re still obviously fans of that style of music, but over the years they’ve grown their sound into something more sophisticated, more baroque, darker.

”Dark” is definitely an appropriate adjective for their fourth LP The Arc, but it’s not dark in the usual ways. Actually, dark doesn’t come close to describing the bleak setting of this album. What’s a more desperate, hopeless time than the apocalypse?

”Now look / the sky’s gone out,” Lucy Brain sings on the first track, “Saucerful of Fire”. Other song titles: “The Shadow”, “The Fog”, “Demon Dreaming”, “Spill the Sky”. The Arc almost entirely takes place in this apocalyptic environment. Or at least, it consistently appears like the end is near. “Oh go damn / where are all the stars?”, the second song starts, though it seems the protagonists may just be locked in a prison.

The tone of their singing is less outraged or alarmed than stunned or observing from outside themselves. The tone of the music is a slow-motion dream or nightmare, often calm and occasionally outwardly mystical. It’s often played like a storybook, a fable, a tale, though the implications are bleak enough for listeners to make connections to real life.

There are spiritual, possibly biblical, certainly political, overtones to this saga of an environmental wasteland. But there’s also a love story here, one of desperation and missed connections. One of the stranger songs, at least musically (“Young and Sexy Vs The Arc”), is followed by the simplest, sweetest love song, or at least, a ballad of love dictated to us by an observer. The singing of songs is here a potential healing presence, like love – “the neighbors fashioned a song / that humbled the sky”. But it seems less the answer than a hopeful sign of humanity within times of chaos and despair.

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