Here are some facts: The Like Young have only two members. One is female. The other is male. The man, Joe Ziemba, plays guitar and writes most of the songs. The woman, Amanda Ziemba, plays drums and sometimes sings. Sharing a distinctive surname, they could either be siblings or spouses. In fact, they're the latter. They've shared a bill with The Von Bondies.
On paper, The Like Young resemble another popular, co-ed, two-member band of siblings/spouses with connections to Jason Stollsteimer's Motor City group, but the similarities end there. While most of today's two-member bands, like The Black Keys and Mr. Airplane Man, seem to gravitate toward blues-based rock and, like sonneteers, find freedom in the limitations of their line-ups, the Ziembas never sound like just two people: they play tight power-pop as if they had an extra person or two. In fact, they sound closer to The Spinanes than to The White Stripes, and closer still to twice-their-size groups like Weezer or Fountains of Wayne.
Tighter and more dynamic than last year's Art Contest, The Like Young's second album, So Serious, is dense with sound and noise, and not just because Joe overlays some songs with spacey keyboards and thumping bass. In part thanks to former Coctail Barry Phipps' snappy production, Joe's guitar makes a really loud noise, and Amanda's drums crack like whips while she does double and triple duty as her husband's backup singer and verbal sparring partner.
None of which is to suggest that The Like Young aren't, in their own way, as elemental as any of the blues twos. Clocking in at a mere 24 minutes, So Serious is all a-jumble with catchy guitars, hooky choruses, tight drumming, and backup vocals that never run out of new ways to sing ooh and aah. However, The Like Young move from one idea to the next so quickly and frenetically that the catchiest parts are short-lived and rarely repeated more than once. "Sabine & Me" concludes with a propulsive start/stop jam that abruptly ends as soon as it reaches its momentum; the song's over in less than a minute and a half.
Nothing on the album sounds half-baked or underdeveloped, but there's more going on in the songs' brevity than a simple leave-'em-wanting-more aesthetic. It takes several listens to grasp the guiding logic on So Serious, not just in how the songs progress but also in how the lyrics describe situations in language that sounds coded and private. "Big ape, why don't you sue them?" Joe sings on "Routines". "Big ape, I'm giving up and laughing." On "Sharp or Messy", he observes, "When my baby head was soft, thoughts like this were never thought," without clarifying what he's thinking.
The opacity of these lyrics is telling. In the end, So Serious reveals itself generally and implicitly: These songs form a dialogue between a couple who share not just a household but a band. The specifics, however, are between Joe and Amanda. Fortunately, they create and sustain a flurry of restless, catchy pop energy that keeps listeners from feeling either incidental or voyeuristic and that gives them something to sing along with.
