Young the Giant recall any number of fourth-tier alt-rock bands from the early 2000s-- groups like Audiovent, Injected, and Tantric, who served as grout between the latest Linkin Park and White Stripes singles, every bit as functional and anonymous as their names suggested. Young the Giant not only sound like these bands to a certain extent, but their self-titled debut fits this mold philosophically as well. In recent years indie rock has been increasingly appealing to commercial interests, yet it's hardly seemed to be growing out of an assembly line in the machine room of the Big Music Industry. But this is "corporate indie." You almost hope Young the Giant acquiesced to some music executives' request to compromise their style, because nothing else sufficiently explains a debut so devoid of personality.
A quintet of Persian, Indian, British, and French Canadian members descent hailing from Newport Beach, Calif., they're signed to Roadrunner Records, which is presumably still eating off the back catalogs of Slipknot and Nickelback. But their debut LP exists on a singular plane, in that it's pretty much indescribable. I don't mean in the sense that it has no artistic precedent-- think any form of rock that was called "alternative" despite being completely uninformed by punk, electronic music, or anything actually "alternative." Rather it seems the album's intent is to make no impression whatsoever on the listener: ambient music performed like rock, except nowhere near as interesting as that sounds in theory.
Vagueness pervades the album; politely distorted guitars twist and churn but never turn into riffs. Choruses become placeholders instead of hooks. Sameer Gadhia's vocals, often recalling Chris Martin's trembling midrange, deliver prosaic lyrics that are neither plainspoken enough to reveal simple truths nor evocative enough to scan as poetry-- there are passing references to general bummed-ness ("Apartment"), addiction (the rank Cold War Kids karaoke of "My Body"), and prostitutes (the cutely named "St. Walker"), but nothing specific enough to prevent them from also selling deodorant.
This sort of purposefully blank approach means that the few songs boasting any sort of frill stand out by default, whether it's the perfunctory slide guitar of "St. Walker" or the sleepwalking harmonies of "I Got". But just to hammer home the indistinctness of it all, after its relatively dry start, Young the Giant take a mid-album reverb bath and dial up the distant, delayed guitar leads and tentative tom beats, once again proving that U2 is still the most influential band of all time for those artists who can't think of other ways to conjure atmosphere.
Remember when Candlebox was described by Madonna as "our grunge band" after they signed with Maverick? It's easy enough to make fun of Candlebox, but what that line represented was the point where "grunge" was something all labels felt they needed to "have," even with only a vague idea of what that actually was. You get the idea of something similar here, a clumsy attempt to siphon indie rock's sound and relative commercial momentum with none of its spirit.
