"It's all downhill from here," calmly intones Eryn Young at the start of
the Youngs' self-titled debut album, adding, "'cause we started at the top." Here, the husband-and-wife duo starts in a becalmed mood, but that mood does not last. In fact, no mood lasts for long in this eclectic and self-consciously arty set, which finds
the Youngs as heavily influenced by
the Carpenters as
the Velvet Underground. Often, they mix those influences within a single song. For example, "Breakdown" begins with a spare arrangement based on electronic blips as
the Youngs sing about travel, but, about a minute-and-a-half in, the song suddenly picks up speed, adds guitar tracks, and becomes a rock song, as if imitating the change from a local road to an interstate highway. Then, just as suddenly, it goes back to the loopy sound of the opening. This mix-and-match style is well expressed on the album's sole cover, the old
Burt Bacharach/
Hal David song "Walk on By" that was a hit for
Dionne Warwick in 1964. The Youngs treat it the same way that
Devo treated
the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in 1978; they give it a staccato beat and sing as if it's being performed by robots. This is the key to their approach, to suggest melodic pop, and then mess with it. "Killing of the King," the lyric a romantic metaphor, finds Eryn Young sounding like
Edie Brickell, while Timothy Young throws in an electric guitar soundscape that recalls Robert Fripp. This sweet-and-sour dichotomy makes for surprising and ear-catching moments throughout the album's running time. That running time, by the way, is not as long as it might seem. Though the disc weighs in at nearly 77 minutes, the untitled final hidden track -- when are we going to dispense with this tiresome gimmick? -- actually begins with 14:52 of dead silence before the six-and-a-half minute song begins. Then it turns out to be an inept piss-take on rap music. It's not worth the wait. ~ William Ruhlmann