At this point, the Glaswegian singer, guitarist, improviser, and experimentalist Richard Youngs can do just about anything, from the freakiest folk to the moodiest minimal electronics, and still sound like himself. It's tempting to joke about his inevitable reggae album, but there's probably already one knocking around somewhere in his voluminous catalog, which runs to literally scores of solo albums and collaborations since 1990. There is, of course, his unmistakable voice, which suggests a sweeter and more gently deranged Jimmy Flemion (of shock-folk duo the Frogs), especially when paired with a drugged-sounding acoustic guitar. There are his cryptic lyrics, those vague parables, like a less pithy Bill Callahan. And most of all, there's his knack for nudging apart any genre into his own personalized shape-- sparse and patient, with small gestures isolated and given room to breathe.
Following the "haunted murk" of Amaranthine, Youngs takes a drastic turn on Summer Through My Mind, an album of slightly unhinged but almost relentlessly tuneful Americana songs. Dominated by Youngs' vocals and guitar with a spooky banjo and some astringent harmonica, it falls on the most direct and accessible end of his output. The title track, a two-minute acoustic ditty, recalls early Guided by Voices, as does an even briefer sketch later in the album, especially with lyrics like "Binary stars over Venice/ helicopters in chains," which sound ripped straight from the Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory. The erratically rising and falling electronic squeal in the background is harmonically destabilizing, representative of an album where rogue elements undermine traditional form until it implodes on "Goodbye Oslo Rose", an enigma in mottled harmonica and e-bowed guitar tones.
Among casual snippets such as "Misjudgment" and fleshed-out songs such as standout "Mountain of Doom", Summer Through My Mind is anchored by two big set-pieces, one that works great and one that will test the patience of any but the staunchest Youngs partisans. On "Spin Me Endless in the Universe", the revolving harmonies of Youngs' double-tracked voice, singing about superpowers, maintains momentum for over 11 minutes, especially with an expressive slide banjo offsetting the eternal arpeggios underpinning the vocals. "The Story of Jhon", on the other hand, stops the album's momentum dead in its tracks. Telling an inscrutable fable Youngs reportedly wrote as a child, about a seafaring boy's troubled relationship with his father, it features the Nebraskan singer/songwriter Simon Joyner.
In a flat voice, Joyner recites a line; Youngs sings it back and strums desultory chords. This goes on for over 10 minutes, with the story developing but the lax music hardly changing except to fall further and further out of tune. Once you've heard the tale, it's difficult to imagine why you would return to it. But the indispensable quality of Richard Youngs is that he's willing to risk uncomfortable or baffling things to rearrange the usual partitions of song. The extended inertia of "The Story of Jhon" emphasizes how unique, how squirming with life, the more gracious and external songs surrounding it on Summer Through My Mind are.
