Sean Ragon doesn't like to make things easy for himself. The former Love as Laughter bassist, now a Brooklyn record store owner, operates within a subgenre-- post-punk folk-- that, if not treated carefully, can conjure thoughts of open-mic aspirants murdering Pogues songs at campus pubs or, worse, get you labeled a fascist. And even if you disregard its Fatherland intimations, Ragon's adopted Cult of Youth moniker still holds him to an exceptionally high standard of passion and messianic fervor, with the expectation that there's a congregation of impressionable souls out there waiting to heed his call.
That scenario seemed rather unlikely when Ragon first debuted Cult of Youth in 2007 as a solo project that emphasized the contrast between the gnashed-teeth aggression of his vocals and the stripped-down acoustic strums underpinning them. In the wrong hands, folk-punk can feel like the musical equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight. But Ragon has avoided this pitfall by recruiting a proper backing band-- including drummer Glenn Maryansky and Zola Jesus' go-to violinist Christiana Key-- and putting their individual skills to excellent use, transforming Cult of Youth from one man's caustic catharsis into something increasingly inviting and alluring, while still retaining the fire and ire that initially fuelled the enterprise.
You can hear that transformation happen in real time on Love Will Prevail's "Garden of Delights". It intensifies over the course of eight verses-- each more grueling and despairingly world-weary than the one before-- before yielding to its first and only chorus, a defiant, optimistic affirmation of the new album's title. This a shift that exemplifies Love Will Prevail's open-hearted, wide-screened splendor: While it's safe to assume that Ragon will be buried with his acoustic guitar, the band's sound is greatly amplified by foregrounding Key's furious fiddle-playing, Maryansky's rollicking rhythms, subtle electric-guitar textures, and majestic swirls of brass-- reminiscent of Robert Wyatt's 1974 masterpiece, Rock Bottom-- that lend Love Will Prevail a spacious, otherworldly feel, without ever acquiring the NPR-tasteful sheen of so many other indie folkestras. And if Ragon's bottom-of-the-well bellow will remain a barrier to entry for some, it's put to far more benevolent use here: the band's expanded palette is matched by a greater penchant for brisk, accessible hooks-- from the anthemic ascent of opener "Man and Man's Ruin" to the scrappy charm of closer "It Took a Lifetime"-- and Brix Smith-like interplay with guest vocalist Beverly Hames that forge a greater aesthetic distance between Cult of Youth and their post-industrial progenitors. (That said, "Path of Total Freedom" confirms Ragon is still a sucker for Celtic-punk jiggery; fortunately, this regression only lasts for 70 seconds.)
As ever, Ragon's lyrics are highly evocative if not outright provocative; those looking for a more sinister intent to Cult of Youth's M.O. may find what they're looking for in a surface reading of mid-album double shot "A New Way" and "New Old Ways", whose titles bring to mind another band that had a lot to answer for. But the mood is ultimately one of liberation and celebration: the former is an arms-swaying shanty that only grows more exuberant as it gets swallowed up by an encroaching wave of distortion; the latter rides its hypno-chant chorus into a heady dub-jazz outro that you wish they'd play out forever. (And, if anything, proclamations such as "There's a war abroad that cannot be won/ There's a war at home that has just begun" and the call for "forward thinking in a backwards time" make most sense as critiques of post-Dubya Republicanism.) Even theatrically bloodthirsty moments like the busker-Bad-Seeds rager "To Lay With the Wolves" reinforce the idea that this album's title is not ironic: After a stormy three-minute build, the song simmers down with Ragon proudly admitting, "I fell in love/ In love with the world/ Because that's when it hit me/ That all was right/ Yes, that's when it hit me/ That the future was bright." It's hard to decode whether Ragon's talking about the future of America or just that of his own band; at the very least, Love Will Prevail gives you ample reason to believe in the latter.
