Young Love - One Of Us
Rating
RIYL
Cobra StarshipMetro Station
The Cab
Cute Is What We Aim For
Release Date
04/28/2009
Label
IslandTracklist
1. Unafraid2. One to ten
3. Get Me Up
4. Black Boots
5. The Picture
6. Down On Me
7. Turn It Up
8. Don’t Fight It
9. Can You Hear Me?
10. Love For Sale
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The problem with One of Us, sophomore release from Dan Keyes’ somewhat indulgent solo project, is the same problem that plagued their debut album Too Young To Fight It -- there is such little substance across its ten tracks, reviewing it is not a desirable task. To listen to this album is not exactly a chore, and there are certainly some rather enjoyable moments, but very little sticks with you and even less jumps out as anywhere near noteworthy.
To better outline the areas where Young Love come up short I shall draw a parallel. Take the band Cobra Starship, headed up by Gabe Saporta. Saporta and Keyes both come from highly revered bands, Midtown and Recover respectively, and chose to defy expectations to make funk-heavy electro-pop for their solo releases. Now whilst Cobra Starship aren’t exactly the most critically acclaimed act, their take on the genre actually works through Gabe’s natural charisma and showmanship, coupled with a lack of musical and personal inhibitions, and they instil their music with a lot of, key word here, fun.
Young Love, on the other hand, make a somewhat similar brand of music, possibly even musically more superior, but it fails on so many levels as it takes itself so seriously and comes across as hollow and flaccid trend-pop. Listen to “Get Me Up”, which has an intro stolen directly from “Beat It”, horrendously lazy verses, and a painful chorus. The saving grace of Too Young To Fight It was that it actually had a cache of solid pop songs, “Discotech”, “Too Young To Fight It” in particular. But save for “The Picture” with its euphoric synths and surprisingly memorable chorus (although it does sound jarringly like an InnerPartySystem b-side as the song progresses), there is little else of merit on here.
News broke recently that Keyes and his Recover brethren are reuniting for shows and possibly new material. This is great news as Recover were a truly great band, so I think we can basically draw a line under Keyes dalliances with electro-funk as ‘downtime musical jitters’ and look to the future for some new Recover. Hopefully it is funk-bass free.
--Alex Davies
Comments
Baltimore, MD
like the news about recover, but probably going to skip out on the young love cd...i didn't really like too young to fight it
Last.fm | RateYourMusic | 8tracks
Leeds, England
I picked up this Guy's debut for like a cent on eBay a while back - it was okay, a few standouts, but that was about it. Worth the cent, but I just listened to this and it completly passed me by. So dull.
California
i knew it was the dude from Recover and I expected a hell of a lot more out of this record than I got. I only made it to track 4 but was let down so felt the need to not go any further.. i'd suggest passing on this one.